Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY

Catterick Camp

Mr. Driberg: asked the Secretary of State for War if he is aware of the obsolete and unsuitable character of many of the buildings at Catterick Camp; and what steps he is taking to improve them.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Antony Head): Yes, Sir. We are going to build four new barrack blocks at Catterick, starting in November, and I hope progress will continue.

Mr. Driberg: What proportion of the camp will that account for? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is a matter of concern to the parents of all National Service men—and Regulars too—that many of the huts in this camp were built as temporary accommodation before the 1914 war? Can he, therefore, say what proportion will be accounted for by this very welcome improvement?

Mr. Head: I cannot say the exact proportion without notice, but I can say definitely that it will be well under half.

Combermere and Victoria Barracks, Windsor

Mr. Driberg: asked the Secretary of State for War if he is aware of the obsolete and unsuitable character of Combermere and Victoria Barracks, Windsor; how soon he expects to be able to authorise the rebuilding or substantial modernisation of these barracks; and what the approximate cost of such works would be.

Mr. Head: I well know the state of these barracks. Plans for rebuilding

Combermere have been prepared and I hope that work will start towards the end of this year.

Mr. Driberg: Again, is the Secretary of State aware—I am sure he is—that these barracks are really a disgrace to the Army and to the very fine regiments who are unfortunate enough to be housed in them? Can he say how long the work of rebuilding will take, because they are deteriorating rapidly and are, in fact, becoming, to use his own word, a slum?

Mr. Head: I lived in these barracks for some time myself, and they have deteriorated since then. I cannot give an exact undertaking about how soon the work will be completed because that depends on various things, but we are hoping to go ahead fast at the end of this year and I think that very soon they will be very much improved.

Mr. Legh: Can my right hon. Friend say what rebuilding of these barracks was done under the previous Administration?

Mr. Head: Not without notice.

No. 1 Dress

Mr. Dodds: asked the Secretary of State for War when the blue walking-out dress will be issued to sergeants, corporals, lance-corporals and privates.

Mr. Head: Issues to Regular sergeants are now being completed. As I stated in reply to the hon. Member's Question on 7th July, we are starting on issues to Regular corporals and I now hope that we may be able to complete them this year. I am most anxious to make progress with lance-corporals and privates, but this must depend on the funds we can make available for this purpose in future years.

Mr. Dodds: Why should the lance-corporals and privates have to wait so long when this blue walking-out outfit would do so much to raise the morale and, above all, act as a recruiting sergeant, because it is so smart? Can I get an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that when that happy state of affairs is reached, it will not be destroyed by some of the men wearing deaf aids and groping about with white walking sticks?

Mrs. Mann: Are we to understand that sergeants, corporals, lance-corporals and privates are now to be put into blue dresses? What is wrong with trousers?

Mr. Head: The hon. Lady is under a misapprehension. It is "blue dress," not "blue dresses." It is only the Scottish regiments which have the hon. Lady's kind of dress.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is no relation whatever between the kilt and the skirt?

Personal Cases

Mr. Dodds: asked the Secretary of State for War on what date 22747580 Signalman K. F. Davis, 31, Cedar Road, Slade Green, Kent, was called up; how long he has been in hospital with rheumatic fever; when it is expected that he will be able to leave the Military Hospital, Catterick; on what date an Army medical board recommended his discharge from the Army on account of a severe degree of flat feet; and how far this physical defect developed during the three months Signalman Davis was in the Service before the medical board's recommendations were made.

Mr. Head: This soldier was called up on 4th December, 1952. He appeared before the Army medical board which recommended his discharge on account of osteo-arthritis of the middle joints of his left foot on 16th March this year. He was in the Military Hospital, Catterick, suffering from rheumatic fever from 25th March this year until 9th July when he was discharged to his home. There is no evidence that his physical defect made any material progress during his service. He reported sick for the first time on account of his feet on 17th February this year and an orthopaedic specialist was called in and arranged for an X-ray photograph to be taken which disclosed this condition. Steps were therefore taken to invalid him from the Service.

Mr. Dodds: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this man went in wearing arch supports which were broken on a route march in the beginning of February, that since then he has not had any arch supports for his feet and has now left the Army without them? How can the right hon. Gentleman say that he was out on 9th July when from the War Office on 30th June I was told that:
he is progressing slowly but has not yet sufficiently recovered to be able to get up.

or to leave hospital? Why was there indecent haste once the Question was on the Order Paper to get this man out of camp in a matter of hours? Can the right hon. Gentleman explain how in this letter from the War Office——

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is asking a supplementary question which is too long on this matter.

Mr. Dodds: May I ask how it was that he was said to have developed rheumatic fever at his home waiting for discharge when he was out on exercise on 21st March and did not get rheumatic fever at home on a 36 hours pass?

Mr. Head: So far as the diagnosis and when he developed rheumatic fever are concerned, I could not say. That is a matter for the medical specialists. Regarding the man's feet, I am quite prepared to take responsibility for everything to do with the War Office, but the actual admission boards for National Service are a matter for the Ministry of Labour. On their behalf I would say the man did not make any reference to any foot disability and men are entitled to do so.

Mrs. Braddock: How long is it after a class III man is called up that a full medical examination takes place in the Forces to check whether the examination by the Ministry of Labour is a fit examination meeting the actual case of the person concerned?

Mr. Head: After he has been examined by the Ministry of Labour and graded every man is examined by the Army.

Mrs. Braddock: How long after?

Mr. Head: I think it is in the first month; I could not say exactly.

Mr. Dodds: Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the answer, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment. Would you be sympathetic, Mr. Speaker, and help me to get one of the Adjournments on the day the House rises?

Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for War if he will agree to the release from the Army of Mr. D. A. Rose, of Balvraid Farm, Inverness, in view of the fact that his absence in the Service will necessitate his father having to sell the farm.

Mr. Head: No, Sir. I have carefully reconsidered this case but, on the facts as I know them, I should not be justified in altering my decision.

Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this decision may vitally affect the whole future of this man and the N.F.U. have strongly supported the case for his release? Is he aware that a great deal of concern is caused locally because it is felt that a lot of other people have been released for less valid reasons?

Mr. Head: There are two points. The farm was bought in May, 1951, when this man's father must have known that the son would be due for call-up. Secondly, when he came before the board he obtained deferment, but he never applied for subsequent deferment. I cannot see that any circumstances have arisen since which have altered the situation.

Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton: This is a family working their own farm. They are busy working all day and it is quite impossible for them to comply with all bureaucratic instructions. Surely they can be given consideration?

Mr. Head: They complied with bureaucratic instructions once on the first deferment, but there was no second application for deferment and there has been no change in the circumstances since the man was called up.

Mr. Manuel: Can the right hon. Gentleman indicate whether or not this family were employed in farming previous to taking over this farm?

Mr. Head: I could not answer that without notice.

Mr. Driberg: asked the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that Mr. Peter R. G. Frostick, 51, Fitches Crescent, Maldon, Essex, Registration Number M.C.D. 3273, who was placed in Grade III at his medical examination on 9th April, 1953, has been posted to the Royal Artillery, Oswestry, with effect from 23rd July; and if, in view of the doubts expressed by an official of the Ministry of Labour, Ipswich, he will further satisfy himself that this man is fit for service in the Royal Artillery before he is required to undertake any military training or duties.

Mr. Head: We do allot a limited number of Grade III men to the Royal Artillery because there are certain duties which can be carried out by such men. I understand, however, that Mr. Frostick's enlistment notice was not issued and that the Ministry of Labour are arranging for his physical fitness for Army service to be further reviewed.

Mr. Driberg: Will the right hon. Gentleman take particular care about this case, in view of the fact that the written reply given me yesterday by the Ministry of Labour contained a false statement, in that it said that no enlistment notice had been sent to this man? That was simply untrue; he was sent an enlistment notice and a travel warrant, but since these Questions were put on the Order Paper the Ministry wrote and asked for them back.

Mr. Shurmer: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Ministry of Labour are having a number of complaints about National Service medical boards? Will he see to it that men are examined again immediately they join their regiments instead of waiting a period of time when they deteriorate as a result of neglect by the Ministry of Labour?

Mr. Hannan: asked the Secretary of State for War when the hon. Member for Maryhill may expect an answer to his letter of 17th June, 1953, concerning an adjustment of pension for one of his constituents.

Mr. Head: The hon. Member will now have received an answer to his letter.

Mr. Hannan: Can the Secretary of State estimate how much longer I should have been required to wait had this Question not been put down? Does he appreciate not only that there has been delay in replying to me but that my constituent has waited nine months for a reply from the War Office to his application for a pension as he was wrongly assessed in 1948. What steps has the Secretary of State taken to overcome the back-log on these cases?

Mr. Head: This was a complicated matter, as the hon. Gentleman knows. The staff at Chelsea have been overworked lately because of recent changes. I apologise for the delay and I will try to ensure that the man is paid quickly.

Mr. Steele: As functions are being transferred from the Ministry of Pensions to the Ministry of National Insurance, would it not be possible to have these pension cases dealt with by the Ministry of National Insurance? I am convinced that if these people had been visited by the welfare officers the delay would not have occurred.

Sir H. Williams: On a point of order. Is it in order to ask supplementary questions about a matter which is not stated in the Question?

Mr. Speaker: It is remotely connected with it.

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for War what efforts have been made to trace the civilian clothing handed in by 22864254 Private T. Morris, Royal Army Service Corps, at Blenheim Barracks, Aldershot, on 14th April last, for dispatch to his home in Manchester and which has not yet arrived; and with what result.

Mr. Head: Inquiries were made at this soldier's unit and as a result it was discovered that this particular parcel had been handed in at the Post Office, Marlborough Lines, Farnborough, on 11th April. The General Post Office is trying to trace it. If it cannot be found, he will be compensated.

Political Fete, Colchester (Band)

Mr. Alport: asked the Secretary of State for War why permission was given for the band of the Northamptonshire Regiment to perform at a political fete held on the recreation ground in Colchester which was addressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewis-ham, South, on Saturday, 4th July.

Mr. Head: This request, made by the East Essex Co-operative Society, was accepted because the officer concerned did not realise that the Society or the fete were of a political character. I have drawn the attention of those concerned to the regulations which are very definite on this subject.

Mr. Alport: Is there not an obligation on those organising occasions of this sort to make certain that commanding officers are aware of the exact nature of the occasion before they agree that a band shall attend?

Mr. Shinwell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that since he became Secretary of State for War military bands have played at Conservative functions?

Mr. Head: Since I have been Secretary of State for War there have been two mistakes; one in which they played for a Government fete and one in which they played for an Opposition fete.

Mr. Coldrick: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this was not a political fete but a day of celebration held in connection with International Co-operators Day? Are we to assume that because politicians are present at a function it is turned into a political gathering?

Mr. Head: I understand that the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) addressed the meeting and the programme included old-time dancing and a "stationary programme," whatever that might be.

Fenham Camp, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Mr. Popplewell: asked the Secretary of State for War when his Department will derequisition the Fenham Militia Camp, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and return the land to its original use as part of the Town Moor.

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Secretary of State for War when he will reopen the public footpath across the portion of the Town Moor at present used for the Fenham Militia Camp.

Mr. Head: This camp is used as a Territorial Army training centre. Every effort is being made to re-accommodate the various units which use the centre so that the camp can be derequisitioned, but I cannot forecast how soon this will be possible. I regret that, so long as the camp is still in use, the footpath cannot be re-opened.

Mr. Popplewell: Is the Secretary of State aware that this camp was first occupied in 1939 and not requisitioned until 1943, that the local authority were informed that the requisitioning powers would end in December, 1952, and it was not until April of this year that they were informed that the requisitioning would continue? Is the Secretary of State aware that there are various statutes governing this land which preserve the land for public use for all time? As it is so long after the end of the war, will the right


hon. Gentleman use all his influence to end this requisitioning at the earliest possible date?

Mr. Head: I am aware that this is a very complicated problem and I should like to move in the matter. We are now discussing this matter with the local planning authorities to try to find alternative sites. We do not want to stay there, but it is a difficult area in which to find alternative sites.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that there is considerable difficulty put on the local population in regard to footpaths? Could he consider the possibility of re-opening the footpath, even if he cannot yet make the land itself available?

Mr. Head: I am informed that the footpath goes right through the huts, which would make it very difficult to do that.

Canal Zone and Far East (Live Entertainments)

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for War to what extent live entertainment is now being provided for British troops in the Canal Zone and the Far East.

Mr. Head: So far this year four parties have toured the Canal Zone; two parties have been to Malaya and a third is there at the present time; and two parties from this country have been to Korea. In addition, of course, our men in Korea have seen parties from the other Commonwealth countries. Further parties to go out this year are three to the Canal-Zone, two to Malaya and two to Korea. The latter parties will also perform in Japan and Hong Kong. I would take this opportunity of paying tribute to the Combined Services Entertainment Advisory Committee who have given great help, especially in raising the standard of performances.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that there will be no falling off in amount this year as compared with the amount of entertainment provided last year, when there was a welcome boom?

Mr. Head: The first thing to go for is quality and to send as many as we possibly can, but to send a concert party to Korea is a very expensive matter.

War Gratuities and Post-War Credits

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for War how many claims for war gratuity and post-war credits were received after 1st January, 1953; and what is the total amount that has been disallowed.

Mr. Head: 3,450 claims have been received since 1st January, 1953: but their investigation has shown that more than 3,350 of the applicants had either already been paid or had no entitlement. The total amount disallowed is approximately £730.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: As the amount involved is now very small, £730, is the War Office proposing, purely on a technicality, to deprive soldiers of this paltry sum? Why not pay out the lot and come clean?

Mr. Head: We had to end the scheme some time, for we should otherwise have gone on retaining clerical staff, which would have been a great waste. This was trumpeted all over the country by means of the B.B.C., posters and so on. It was a series of announcements. Where there was a good excuse we considered it.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is it not paltry when only £730 is involved?

Officers' Emergency Reserve

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the Secretary of State for War how many officers are now enrolled on the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve; and how many were enrolled during the past year.

Mr. Head: 3,679 men and 221 women are now enrolled. In the past year 265 men and four women were enrolled.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve still regarded as an active body, or is it being allowed to run down?

Mr. Head: It is a useful list of individuals, some of them civilians and some ex-officers, who are prepared to do certain jobs in the event of war, and it is of value to us.

Recruits

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for War the reason for the recent decline in the number of recruits for the Army.

Mr. Head: Last year's recruiting figures were the best we have ever had. One of the main reasons for this year's decline is that fewer men have been called up for National Service than last year and the field for recruiting has therefore been narrowed. There are many other factors which may have contributed, but their precise effect is hard to assess.

Mr. Hughes: Is it not true that Regular soldiers are not re-enlisting as the Minister wished them to re-enlist, and National Service men are not re-enlisting, and that we shall not be able to get the men and will have to reduce our commitments?

Mr. Head: The picture is not as gloomy as the hon. Gentleman paints it, but any assistance that he can afford me will be very welcome.

Mr. Nabarro: Does not my right hon. Friend consider it significant that a record low level of unemployment coincides with a record level of recruitment? Does not that belie all the fallacious Socialist propaganda that it requires unemployment to secure a high level of recruitment for the Regular Army?

Mr. Speaker: There is nothing about employment in the Question.

Mr. Wigg: Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) is talking unmitigated nonsense and that the increase in the number of recruits in 1952, which everyone welcomed, was due to the fact that a number of National Service men were attracted by the differential in rates of pay, and to that reason only?

Mr. Head: My hon. Friend's contention is borne out by past recruiting figures in relation to unemployment. Regarding present engagements, it is an undoubted fact that men joining for National Service are attracted by the higher pay for an extra year's service.

Mr. Shinwell: Can we have the facts presented to the House? Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that the increase in recruitment last year was due to the short service engagement coming into operation? Will he also agree that the real trouble is that the men who have now enlisted for short service engagements are not prepared to extend their engagements for longer periods?

Mr. Head: We do not know about the extensions because no man has yet completed three years. It would be a little hazardous for me to express an opinion, but I have never denied that the increase in recruiting has been largely due to the short service engagement. I have always said so.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Clothing and Textiles (Standards)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that, as from 5th September, 1953, textile and apparel imports into Australia containing less than 95 per cent. but more than 5 per cent. wool, must be labelled so that the percentage of wool is shown together with the names of other fibres in order of dominance; and, in view of the fact that this information is demanded also by the United States of America and South Africa and has to be supplied by exporters in this country, whether he will recommend similar information being available for British shoppers.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Henry Strauss): I am aware of the regulations to which the hon. Lady refers. As regards the second part of her Question, I would ask her to await the forthcoming announcement by the British Standards Institution to which I referred on 7th July.

Miss Burton: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that we have been awaiting this information for a very long time? Is he also aware that the shoppers and the retail trade have repeatedly asked for it? Why is it that the Government do not believe that the shoppers should know what is in the goods that they are buying?

Mr. Strauss: The utility of the reform for which the hon. Lady has frequently pleaded is a matter on which different opinions are held. It would be in the interests of everybody to await the forthcoming statement by the British Standards Institution. I do not think the hon. Lady will have to wait much longer.

Mrs. Mann: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking in conjunction with the British Standards Institution to raise the standard


of the materials in gentleman's suits, flannel trousers, and sports jackets which now become threadbare after six months' wear.

Mr. H. Strauss: The British Standards Institution expects soon to make an announcement about standard descriptions of wool cloth, and progress should then be possible in the difficult task of devising standards of performance. The Institution has already started work on such a standard for cloth for boys' knickers.

Mrs. Mann: Could the hon. Gentleman say if a start will be made first with gents' clothing, because it is very important that the breadwinner's clothing should wear substantially well?

Mr. Strauss: I think that at the moment boys' knickers have the priority.

Mr. Boardman: Would the Minister agree that in such cases where there might be legitimate complaint against British goods, such complaints might be more appropriately dealt with elsewhere, and would he not agree that the crying of stinking fish in this House cannot possibly help the sale of British goods abroad?

Mr. Strauss: I have great sympathy with the desire that prompted the supplementary question; I think it would be unfortunate if the impression were given, either in this House or outside, that British goods generally were not of good quality.

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that at the annual conference of the International Wool Textile Organisation in Lisbon last month it was proposed that in all countries the percentage of non-wool fibres, in textile fabrics should be declared; that the leader of the British delegation spoke against this proposal, in view of the work being done by the British Standards Institution in this field; and what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government on this question.

Mr. H. Strauss: This conference had no Government representatives but, according to my information, its proceedings are not accurately described in the hon.

Member's Question. The policy of Her Majesty's Government in this matter is to encourage trade and industry to work out their own standards of quality in conjunction with the British Standards Institution.

Miss Burton: While being sorry if the information in the Question is not correct, might I ask the Minister if he is aware that many countries are in favour of non-wool fibres in textile fabrics being declared? Why have the Government of this country steadfastly set their face against this being done?

Mr. Strauss: It would be wrong for me to comment on the wisdom of legislation in other countries. As regards the position in this country I would ask the hon. Member to await the statement to which I have previously referred.

Monopolies Commission (Pneumatic Tyres)

Mr. Bence: asked the President of the Board of Trade the details of the terms of reference to the Monopolies Commission for their inquiries into the subject of pneumatic tyres.

Mr. H. Strauss: The hon. Member will find the terms set out in Appendix 2 of the Board of Trade's Annual Report for 1952 on the operation of the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices (Inquiry and Control) Act, 1948 (House of Commons Paper No. 98, Session 1952–3).

Mr. Bence: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that recently a snooper of the rubber monopoly, disguised as a farm labourer, purchased a tyre for £7 6s. 8d. and had a penalty of £25 imposed on the shopkeeper by the motor trades association? In view of the opposition of hon. Gentlemen opposite to snoopers who go round to see that people do not charge too much, will he put this before the Monopolies Commission and forbid private monopolies to employ snoopers to ensure that people do not sell cheaply?

Mr. Strauss: I do not think that supplementary question arises out of the Question on the Order Paper, but I have no doubt whatever that the Monopolies Commission will have noted what was said on this subject recently and today.

Helicopters (Ceylon)

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the President of the Board of Trade what approaches he has received from the Government of Ceylon for the export of a helicopter from this country; and what restrictions apply to such exports from Britain to Ceylon.

The Secretary for Overseas Trade (Mr. H. R. Mackeson): My right hon. Friend has had no approach from the Ceylon Government. Before a helicopter could be exported anywhere, an export licence would be required.

Mr. Wilson: Because of the importance to Ceylon of fighting plant diseases, will the hon. Gentleman ensure that his Department gives all possible help to the Government of Ceylon in view of the most regrettable decision of the American Government to refuse an export licence for a helicopter for this purpose?

Mr. Mackeson: While I deprecate Bevanite or Communist attacks on the United States, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that Her Majesty's Government will do everything they can to support the Ceylonese in this matter.

Mr. Wilson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, despite his rather ill-tempered comments, the attacks on the United States for the refusal of this licence will have the support of hon. Members in all parts of the House? Is he also aware that most of the attacks which have been made on United States trade policy on this side of the House have been echoed after an interval by his right hon. Friends.

Mr. Mackeson: Yes, but I think the supplementary, which is quite obvious, might have been put in a written Question if the right hon. Gentleman had the guts to do so.

Hon. Members: Oh!

Mr. Wilson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that it would not have been possible to have asked the Government to take responsibility for the attitude of the United States Government, and that the only way in which this matter could be raised was to ask the hon. Gentleman what the Government were prepared to do about aiding Ceylon in this matter?

Mr. Mackeson: I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I have always treated him with the greatest courtesy—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—and I think he is simply following up the most unfortunate speech which he made in the country recently.

Mr. Shinwell: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that his forthright utterances, in true Tory style, will ensure his promotion to the Cabinet?

Captain Duncan: May I ask my hon. Friend whether, if he does issue a licence for the export of a helicopter to Ceylon for spraying purposes, he will not restrict the use to which the spraying apparatus can be put?

Mr. Mackeson: Yes, of course. Any approach made by the Ceylonese Government, who are members of the Commonwealth and very great friends of this country, will be received with the greatest sympathy by Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Ellis Smith: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, am I correct in interpreting the Standing Orders that for one hon. Member to make a reflection on another is out of order? That is my first question. My second question is this: Is it in order for the word "guts" to be used in the manner in which it was used, and may I have your ruling on those two points?

Mr. Speaker: I deprecate all language of an inflammatory or exacerbating character, and always must do so, in this House. As to the word "guts," I have known it used in many innocent connotations. As to reflections by one hon. Member on another, I am afraid that is inseparable from the conduct of our debates, and it is in order as long as no false or hidden motive is imputed in the reflection.

Dutch Tomatoes

Mr. Patrick Maitland: asked the President of the Board of Trade the volume of Dutch tomatoes landed at Leith and Newcastle each day between 29th June and 6th July.

Mr. Mackeson: I regret that figures of daily landings are not available from the trade statistics.

Horticultural Products (Foreign Subsidies)

Mr. P. Wells: asked the President of the Board of Trade which countries are exporting subsidised horticultural produce to this country.

Mr. Mackeson: As far as I am aware, the only directly subsidised horticultural products that are imported into the United Kingdom in any substantial quantities are citrus fruit from Israel and dried fruit from the United States and Greece. The use of multiple exchange rates and various forms of export incentives by a number of countries which export horticultural produce to the United Kingdom may, however, in some cases constitute an indirect subsidisation of exports.

Mr. Wells: Will the Minister take all possible steps to see that these exports, which are indirectly subsidised, do not compete unfairly with home products?

Mr. Mackeson: Yes, certainly, but, broadly speaking, as far as our information is concerned the subsidised exports are not in direct competition with our own producers. If the hon. Gentleman, or any other hon. Member, has any information which will help us in our fight to stop this subsidisation, I shall be glad to have it.

Weights and Measures (Legislation)

Mr. Edelman: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a further statement on the report of the Committee on Weights and Measures Legislation; and what action he is proposing to take arising out of it which will extend the prohibition of the giving of short weight and measure in retail sales as contained in the Sale of Food (Weights and Measures) Act, 1926, to wholesale dealings, particularly in fruit and vegetables.

Mr. H. Strauss: As my right hon. Friend explained in answer to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Sir H. Webbe) on 11th November last, consultations are taking place with the various interests concerned on the many recommendations contained in the report. Those relating to wholesale dealings in fruit and vegetables will be started soon.

Mr. Edelman: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware of the great urgency of this matter and of the widespread complaint by retailers that certain wholesalers, particularly those importing from France, Spain and Italy, are complaining bitterly of short measure? In view of the urgency of the matter will he take steps to make sure that short measure, wherever it comes from, will be treated as an offence?

Mr. Strauss: I am aware of the interest to which this matter is giving rise, and I think the hon. Gentleman will agree as to the complexity of this subject and as to its controversial nature. I think I had better not say anything about the merits while these discussions are proceeding.

Hire Purchase and Credit Sales (Road Vehicles)

Mr. J. T. Hall: asked the President of the Board of Trade why mechanically propelled road vehicles and chassis are included in the First Schedule to the Hire Purchase and Credit Sale Agreements (Control) Order, 1952.

Mr. H. Strauss: The restrictions imposed by the Order are part of Her Majesty's Government's general economic policy and the First Schedule includes these goods with many other classes of goods frequently disposed of by hire purchase or credit sale.

Mr. Hall: Is the Minister aware that Smiths Electrical Vehicles, a firm on the Team Valley Trading Estate, Gateshead, who produce mobile shops, are greatly hampered by the operation of this order? Does he realise that the person who buys a stationary shop is allowed 25 years to pay for it, while the person who buys a mobile shop is allowed only 18 months? Will he take steps to remove this anomaly?

Mr. Strauss: I have given reasons for the inclusion of these goods in the Schedule. About the industry to which the hon. Member has referred, it has, of course, benefited greatly by the reduction in Purchase Tax in the recent Budget.

Mr. Gaitskell: Yes, but will the Minister please explain how he can reconcile the maintenance of this Order, and in particular the inclusion of mechanically propelled vehicles in it, with the intention


of the Government to stimulate investment?

Mr. Strauss: Obviously we cannot indulge in question and answer on a matter more appropriate for discussion on the Finance Bill. This Order has been approved by this House.

Mr. Gaitskell: The hon. and learned Gentleman defended the maintenance of this Order on the grounds that it was part of the policy of Her Majesty's Government. I ask how he can reconcile this with another part of the policy of Her Majesty's Government. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he had better try to reconcile his policy in the Board of Trade with that of the Treasury.

Mr. Strauss: If we were now debating the general policy of Her Majesty's Government, an answer would be given to the right hon. Gentleman. What this Question asks is why particular goods are in the Schedule to the Order. The answer to that question has been given.

Mr. Ernest Davies: asked the President of the Board of Trade when it is proposed to lay before the House the Order amending the Hire Purchase and Credit Sale Agreement (Control) Order, 1952, exempting from that Order's requirements hire-purchase agreements relating to the disposal of Road Haulage Executive vehicles.

Mr. H. Strauss: My right hon. Friend hopes to make and lay the necessary Statutory Instrument soon.

Mr. Davies: Before his right hon. Friend proceeds with this Order, would the hon. and learned Gentleman draw his attention to the circular issued by Transport Unit Finance, which is operated jointly by the Road Haulage Association and United Dominions Trust, on the denationalisation of road transport, in which they are offering to purchase units from the Road Haulage Executive for resale on hire purchase? Does not that show that the purpose for which it is proposed to lay this Order has been completely undermined, as it will not help the small man but the large trust?

Mr. Strauss: The merits of the Statutory Instrument can be more easily discussed when the Statutory Instrument has been laid. Then, if necessary, a debate will arise.

Merchandise Marks Regulations

Mr. Swingler: asked the President of the Board of Trade to what extent the instruction issued in his Department on 7th July, 1913, to the effect that the Board of Trade should initiate prosecutions under the Merchandise Marks Act, 1887, where the Minister considered that such action was in the public interest, has been carried out; and how many such prosecutions have been initiated since the end of the last war.

Mr. H. Strauss: I assume that the hon. Member has in mind Regulations issued in 1913 under the Merchandise Marks Act, 1891. These Regulations remain in force and the Board of Trade have instituted two prosecutions under them since 1945.

Mr. Swingler: Is not the hon. and learned Gentleman at present engaged in trying to strengthen the law about merchandise marks? What is the good of doing that unless some attempt is made by the Board of Trade to carry out the law? Do not two prosecutions in 40 years show a disgraceful neglect of the public interest by the Board of Trade?

Mr. Strauss: No, Sir. It is true that the enforcement of these Acts is important, but it is quite untrue that the Board of Trade are the only people to enforce them. There has been no change of policy between this Government and the last Government as regards what prosecutions are undertaken by the Board of Trade. The fact that there are few prosecutions by the Department does not mean that the Acts are not enforced.

Mr. Swingler: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman suggesting that there have been only two cases in the last 40 years in which it was in the public interest for the Department to prosecute where fraudulent or false trade descriptions were being used?

Mr. Strauss: The hon. Member is wrong in thinking that 40 years have elapsed since the end of the last war. The Question refers to
… since the end of the last war.
The hon. Member should read his own Question. My answer was that there have been two prosecutions since 1945.

Hosiery Machinery

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that many of our stocking manufacturers in this country have not been allowed the dollars with which to buy suitable machinery for the making of more durable nylon stockings; that the purchase of such machinery would assist our export figures; and if he will take steps to remedy this.

Mrs. Mann: asked the President of the Board of Trade the nature of the restrictions which are placed on nylon stocking manufacturers regarding the import of machinery which would enable them to compete with other countries in exporting a more durable, non-ladder nylon stocking.

Mr. Mackeson: Fully - fashioned hosiery machinery is available from certain non-dollar countries and may be imported from most of these sources under open general licence. For balance of payments reasons, machinery imports from the dollar area are strictly controlled, but it is expected that during 1952 and 1953 nearly 200 fully-fashioned hosiery machines will have been imported from the United States. In addition, my right hon. Friend has recently arranged for licences to be issued for the import of a limited number of fine-gauge machines over the next 12 months. I do not accept the implication that the use of American machines would make nylon stockings more durable and I am not satisfied that the expenditure of more dollars than are already being provided would give a compensating increase in our exports.

Miss Burton: While thanking the Minister for that reply, might I ask him if he is aware that I really entered this field because I wanted to ask him if the Government would ask the manufacturers in this country if they would consider the possibility of manufacturing stockings with several different leg lengths to each foot size? Is he aware that many women have short feet and long legs or long feet and short legs? Would he recommend to the manufacturers that if we could have, say, three lengths of stocking to each size of foot both our export and our home markets would be helped?

Mr. Mackeson: I should like to discuss that matter with the hon. Lady.

Miss Ward: Is my hon. Friend aware that whatever the position about legs, machinery or anything else, nylon stockings really could be improved? Will he kindly apply his mind to that so that we may have better quality?

Mr. Mackeson: I must refer my hon. Friend to the original Question.

Miss Ward: I am not interested in that.

Mrs. Mann: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there has been a great reluctance on the part of British manufacturers to enter the fish-net, non-ladder stocking trade in spite of the fact the women of this country want that type of stocking——

Miss Ward: Hear, hear.

Mrs. Mann: —and would he, while attending to the long leg, short leg of the female stocking, also direct his attention to the same thing along the Front Bench in male socks—short leg, long leg, visible bare leg——

Mr. Mackeson: I should be very sorry to interfere with the hon. Lady's Friends. We have made a serious effort to help this important industry to produce and export more.

Mr. Bottomley: In view of the acceptance by the Minister that the volume of overseas production is superior to our own, would not he agree that British technical skill is in many respects superior to that of our foreign competitors? Would not he agree that British manufacturers should be asked to provide the necessary machines?

Mr. Mackeson: I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. As I understand it, we need to import only one or two specialised types of machine.

Whisky

Mr. Stokes: asked the President of the Board of Trade how much whisky was shipped from Northern Ireland to the United States of America in 1952; and at what price.

Mr. Mackeson: None, Sir.

Highland Travel Facilities (Sleeping Berths)

Sir D. Robertson: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the tourist trade to the Highlands is being restricted for lack of sleeping berths on trains; and, in view of the importance of the trade to the national economy, what representations he will make to the British Transport Commission on this matter.

Mr. Mackeson: I propose to ask the British Travel and Holidays Association to consider, in conjunction with the Scottish Tourist Board, the extent to which present availability of sleeping berths on trains to the Highlands is restricting tourist traffic. The Association will then be able to make any necessary representations to the British Transport Commission. The Commission has a representative on the Board of the Association.

Sir D. Robertson: Will the hon. Gentleman make representations himself? He has only to go to the travel office in the Palace of Westminster to find proof of the statement in the Question. There are long, weary lists for all trains to the Highlands of people who want to travel and who can travel. Does he not agree that eight years after the end of the war it is wrong that there should be this shortage of essential equipment?

Mr. Mackeson: No Minister is responsible for that at the moment. I am responsible for doing what I can to help the tourist industry, and I will do so, but I might tell my hon. Friend that, having done so, I think it is about time that we had a little bit of North-South travel for a change.

Coronation Films (Quota Certificates)

Mr. Gaitskell: asked the President of the Board of Trade on what grounds quota certificates were granted in respect of the films, "A Queen is Crowned," and "Elizabeth is Queen."

Mr. H. Strauss: These two films are films to which the Cinematograph Films Acts apply and were registered as British and as exhibitors' quota films in accordance with the requirements of Sections 25 and 26 of the Cinematograph Films Act. 1938.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is not it the fact that under Section 35 of the Cinematograph Films Act, 1938 quota should not be granted to:
… films consisting wholly or mainly of photographs which, at the time when they were taken, were means of communicating news …
Is not it the case that these are in fact news films which should not have been granted a quota?

Mr. Strauss: The right hon. Gentleman has accurately referred to the relevant Section of the Act for this purpose. My right hon. Friend is advised and believes that neither of these films comes within any of the exceptions set out in Section 35.

Mr. Gaitskell: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is much dissatisfaction in the film industry over this decision, and will he say if the matter was referred to the Cinematograph Films Council?

Mr. Strauss: I shall have to ascertain that; but I think this is a matter on which, subject to the legal and other advice which he may be given, my right hon. Friend must take the decision.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Retail Sales Tax

Mr. Gower: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he has considered the advantages or otherwise of introducing a sales tax to take the place of existing Purchase Tax; and if he will make a statement.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): The relative merits and demerits of various forms of retail sales taxes, as compared with the Purchase Tax, were considered before the inception of the tax and have been reviewed on a number of occasions since. I am fully satisfied that it would not be advantageous or practicable at this stage to replace the Purchase Tax with a retail sales tax.

Development Value (Compensation Claims)

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the heavy and frequently abortive expenditure incurred in connection with claims for loss of development value under Part VI of the Town and Country


Planning Act, 1947, he will instruct the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to treat such expenditure either as an expense which may be deducted from profits before taxation, or as part of a management expenses claim.

Mr. R. A. Butler: No, Sir. I am advised that expenditure in connection with a claim under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, for compensation for the loss of development value of land held as a fixed asset is not admissible as a deduction in computing profits or as an expense of management for taxation purposes.

Mr. Thornlon-Kemsley: Why not?

Mr. Butler: Because such expense is regarded as an outlay of a capital nature, and is therefore inadmissable.

Joint Exchequer Board (Chairman)

Mr. Healy: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the name and age of the present chairman of the Joint Exchequer Board, which decides upon the financial relations between the Government here and that of Northern Ireland; what salary is paid him; and when the board met last.

Mr. R. A. Butler: The right hon. Lord Alness, G.B.E., is the present Chairman of the Joint Exchequer Board. Lord Alness is aged 85; he does not receive any salary as Chairman of the Board. The last meeting of the Board was held on 19th October., 1949.

Mr. Healy: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I cannot congratulate him on his expedition in this matter? Is he also aware that the Northern Ireland Government do not want a report by the Board on the matter because it would show that they pay no contribution, but, in fact, on balance, receive a large sum in order to make partition work from the Exchequer here? Is he not also aware that, in actual fact, this Joint Exchequer Board is a ghost; we hear about it, but never see it?

Mr. Butler: The main function of the Board is to deal with disagreements in matters connected with the Northern Ireland question, and it has before it the question of the imperial contribution. The fact that there has not been disagreement has made it unnecessary to hold a meeting of the Board.

Mr. J. Hudson: Is it not likely that there will be no expression from Northern Ireland on the point of disagreement which has just been referred to, as they are doing extremely well through their failure to make the contribution which they are called upon to make, and would not the right hon. Gentleman consider that the time has come when, if raids are to be made on the Scilly Isles, Ulster should be asked to pay its proper contribution to this community?

Mr. Butler: I would rather not go into the problems of Ulster at this stage. All I know is that they are having an exceptionally difficult time with their unemployment problem, and I should not like to make it more difficult for them.

Sir D. Campbell: Will the Chancellor confirm that, apart from a few very minor differences about the rates of transferred taxes, in Northern Ireland the taxation rates are the same as in other parts of the United Kingdom, and is he aware that Northern Ireland's imperial contribution aggregated over £250 million during the past 10 years?

Mr. Butler: I am aware of these facts, and also of the fact that it is the responsibility of the Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland to introduce his own Budget.

Arts Council Grants

Mr. Gower: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, in future he will make it a condition of his grant to the Arts Council that larger proportions should be allocated to Wales, Scotland and Ulster, respectively.

Mr. R. A. Butler: No, Sir. The Scottish and Welsh shares are for the Council to determine, and their Charter does not extend to Northern Ireland,

Mr. Gower: Is the Minister satisfied that the money has been sensibly spent? Did he note a recent report that a picture purchased by the Arts Council was hung upside down at Manchester for five days before the fact was noticed, and will he consider that, if he allocates a reasonable proportion to Wales, it will be used much more sensibly?

Mr. Butler: I think my hon. Friend's supplementary question is difficult to answer. I do not know, without seeing


the picture, whether it is a reflection on the artistic perception of Manchester or on the nature of the picture itself; but, in reply to the other part of my hon. Friend's question, I am satisfied that there is an adequate grant for Wales.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Will the Chancellor resist pressure from his own benches to restrict or restrain in any way the proper free use of the judgment of the Arts Council?

Mr. Butler: I do not accept the reflection on these benches, but I will resist that pressure.

Post-war Credits

Mr. Gower: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will ensure that the repayment of post-war credits shall in no case be twice postponed by the death of the holder prior to the age for repayment and by the subsequent death of his beneficiary prior to such age.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I regret that I cannot accept suggestions for further releases of post-war credits at present.

Mr. Gower: In his future consideration of this matter, will my right hon. Friend consider the analogy to death duties, where certain allowances are made if deaths occur soon after one another?

Mr. Butler: I have already stated in this House that the aspect of the post-war credit that is most difficult is this question of death supervening at a certain date, and, if anything ever can be done, that will be one of the first matters to be considered.

Personal Case

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer on what grounds he has decided that Mr. J. L. Bewick, who was a member of the Royal Army Service Corps, enjoyed military rank, wore military uniform, received military training and served abroad in a war theatre, is not entitled, for the purpose of Section 1 of the Superannuation Act, 1946, to be regarded as a former member of the Armed Forces of the Crown.

Mr. R. A. Butler: Since this decision was given, further facts have come to my notice. I am having them investigated and will write to the hon. Member as soon as I can.

Mr. Wyatt: Will the Chancellor bear in mind that this man, on demobilisation, was transferred to Class Z of the Army Reserve, in which he still is, and that it is, therefore, rather unfair to deny that he is a member of the Armed Forces of the Crown?

Mr. Butler: It all arose out of this difficulty of defining whether the R.A.S.C./E.F.I. was service in the Armed Forces, but I shall be writing to the hon. Member, after making a review.

Industrial Concessions (Commonwealth Countries)

Mr. N. Macpherson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will enter into negotiations with Governments of territories in the British Commonwealth, with a view to reaching agreements with them in anticipation of legislation in this country to make certain pioneer industry concessions granted in the territories concerned fully effective, in accordance with the recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I do not think it would be advisable to enter into such negotiations in anticipation of possible legislation on this subject. As my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary explained both during the Finance Bill debates and in reply to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Braine) on 2nd July, I am going to consider this matter again when the Royal Commission have made their final report.

Entertainments Duty (Cinemas)

Mr. N. Macpherson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the only cinema in the mining small burgh of Sanquhar is about to close owing to the incidence of Entertainments Duty and that there are many cinemas in small burghs in a similar plight; and what action he will take to prevent this happening.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I am unable to confirm the information in the first part of the Question; in response to the second, I would refer my hon. Friend to the statement that I made in the course of the very full debate that we had on this subject on 22nd June.

Mr. Macpherson: Does my right hon. Friend realise that this is a matter of considerable urgency and that in a case where one cinema is free from tax and another cinema in a town very close does pay tax, the situation becomes unbearable?

Mr. Butler: I realise that, and of course we discussed this very matter. I cannot undertake to give an answer about the reasons why a particular cinema closes.

Mr. Rankin: Is the Chancellor aware that when we sought to introduce a new Clause in this House that would have prevented this from happening, the hon. Member voted against it?

Oral Answers to Questions — UNIVERSITY STAFFS (POLITICAL ACTIVITIES)

Sir H. Williams: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how far the grants made to universities by the University Grants Committee stipulate that university officers in their official capacity should not take part in any controversial politics.

Mr. R. A. Butler: No such stipulation is made.

Sir H. Williams: Has the Chancellor's attention been drawn to the fact that 14 Vice-Chancellors, described as such, took an active part in a certain controversy in a letter to "The Times," and does he not think that it is very undesirable that they should do it in their official capacity?

Mr. Butler: We still live in a free country. The political activities of university staff are a matter for the university authorities.

Mr. Gaitskell: Does the Chancellor appreciate that his replies to these questions will give general satisfaction and receive general support, and will he make plain to his hon. Friend that it is no part of the Treasury's business to try to suppress political opinions in universities?

Mr. Butler: I think my hon. Friend fully appreciates that, but I would not wish to seek advice on the intimate relations in political matters between my hon. Friend and myself from any section of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions — PROVISION FOR OLD AGE (COMMITTEE)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) if he will widen the terms of reference of the independent committee which he intends to set up to review the economic and financial problems involved in providing for old age so as to enable that committee to review the anomaly which at present arises from the fact that while the majority of men die earlier, they are eligible to receive their pensions later in life than women;
(2) if he will amend the terms of reference of the independent committee which he intends to set up to review the economic and financial problems involved in providing for old age so as to enable it to consider and recommend the assessment of old age pensions on a sliding scale which will bear a direct relation to the cost-of-living at the time when the pension is actually paid to the pensioner.

Mr. R. A. Butler: No, Sir. The terms of reference, which I announced on Thursday, 2nd July, are widely drawn and do not preclude the Committee from considering these points if they so desire.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Chancellor realise that this is not merely an actuarial matter but one which involves social problems such as those which the Committee will have to consider, and will he make it plain that these problems are within the terms of reference, because they press very hardly on men between the ages of 60 and 65?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir; I am quite sure the Committee will pay attention to this Question and answer.

Mr. Hughes: I am much obliged.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Crookshank: It is not now proposed to move the Motion to approve the Herring Industry (Grants for Fishing Vessels and Engines) Scheme tomorrow night. We think that it would meet the general convenience to consider the Scheme next week at the same time as a similar Scheme which is expected to be laid today.

TIMOTHY JOHN EVANS (REPORT OF INQUIRY)

Mr. G. H. R. Rogers: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your guidance on a matter of procedure? I wish to bring before the House a matter which is, I believe, of tremendous national importance. As the House and you will be aware, today we have been presented, a matter of two and a half hours or so ago, with the Report of the tribunal set up to inquire into the trial and execution of Timothy John Evans for the murder of his child, and tomorrow morning John Halliday Christie is to be executed.
It seems to me that some way ought to be found for this House to discuss this Report before Christie, who is a vitally material witness, is executed. As you will be aware, I sought this morning to put down a Private Notice Question on this matter, which you in your wisdom rejected under the Standing Orders and the rules of the House. So far I have been unable to find any other way of raising the matter, but I feel, and I am sure that the whole House does, that it would be the wish of the country that we should discuss this Report and give it our approval or otherwise before this material witness is executed.
It is, I believe, within the power of this House to reject the findings of the Tribunal, and in fact to order another inquiry. If we do not discuss the White Paper until after the material witness is executed, what practical purpose will there be? Therefore, I seek your guidance as to the course I ought to adopt to bring this matter before the House before it is too late.

Mr. S. Silverman: Before you give your Ruling on this question, Mr. Speaker, I desire to make an observation which might perhaps be taken into account by you in considering what advice can be given. We all know that the rule is now established, whatever some of us may think about it, that the Home Secretary cannot be asked Questions, nor can there be any discussion here or any question of a Motion or a Question on the Order Paper, about the exercise of the Prerogative of mercy until after the event.
I submit that what is involved here is not the Prerogative of mercy. The suggestion is not being made that anything shall be done to influence the mind of the Home Secretary one way or the other as to whether the law shall take its course ultimately in this case or not. It is not the Prerogative of mercy with which we are now concerned. We are now concerned, not with whether the execution shall take place or not, but when. I submit that the question when it shall take place is not governed by the same considerations as those which apply to the quite different question whether it should take place at all.
What my hon. Friend has submitted—and there must be many hon. Members on both sides of the House who are with him strongly and emphatically—is the suggestion that there is a great deal that the House would still like to know about all these matters, especially after the Report which has now been made, and that we cannot know them if the second of the main actors, as well as the first, is put in the position in which his mouth is forever silenced. This must be a matter with which the House is entitled to deal. It is not a matter in which the Prerogative of mercy, a totally different matter, must apply.

Mr. Speaker: I had to refuse the Private Notice Question dealing with these matters from the hon. Member who raised this issue, because of the long-established practice of the House to which I had occasion to refer in January last. On that occasion I referred to a Ruling by my predecessor when he said:
A capital sentence cannot be raised in Question or debate while the sentence is pending. After it has been executed, the Minister responsible may be criticised on the relevant Vote in Supply, or on the Adjournment. I have said that that is the practice of the House, and I cannot alter the practice of the House.
I commented on that occasion:
Neither can I."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th January, 1953; Vol. 510, c. 850.]
According to the practice of the House, I felt obliged to rule out that matter. If hon. Members will look at the same volume of HANSARD they will see what the then Speaker, Colonel Clifton Brown, said on that occasion. He supported his Ruling by Rulings going back to 1887. There are many Rulings to the same effect.
To put it shortly, I think the practice of the House is this: it realises that these matters of the Prerogative of mercy, after a capital sentence has been passed, and Questions as to the postponement of an execution, are within the responsibility of the Home Secretary, which is a very heavy responsibility, and that he has all the facts relevant to his decision in this matter in his possession. He is liable to be criticised afterwards for what he does, but until the sentence is executed the rule of the House, as established by long practice, is that no Question can be addressed to him or to the House on the matter, and the matter cannot be raised either by Question or by debate. That is the practice of the House and I am bound by it as much as hon. Members. If the House desires on some future occasion to take this matter into consideration and change its practice, that is not a matter for me, but until that has been done by Resolution of the House I am bound by this practice.

Mr. Silverman: I submit that no decision of the House was ever taken at any time which deals with the question which my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, North (Mr. G. H. R. Rogers) has put before you. There is all the difference in the world between that matter and the House establishing by precedent and long practice—if indeed it has done so—the question of the Prerogative of mercy and its exercise as one within the discretion and responsibility of the Home Secretary, and subject to criticism only afterwards, if at all.
This is not that question, but a totally different question, a question not of whether the execution shall take place, but whether it shall take place tomorrow and in circumstances which have no bearing whatever upon the merits of the man or the case involved but upon a quite different case of another person which it is now unfortunately in order to discuss. This must be a totally different matter from the question of bringing pressure to bear, Parliamentary or otherwise, upon the Home Secretary as to what advice he will give about the Prerogative of mercy.
That is a matter on which he has decided in this case. We cannot discuss it, unfortunately, until afterwards. What we are concerned with today is not that question at all but only whether there can be

such an interval of time as will enable the House to discuss matters which cause the deepest anxiety and misgivings about the administration of justice. Nobody expects the administration of justice to be infallible, but it is integrity which matters, and that is involved here. I submit, I hope with respect and no little confidence, that all the previous decisions and precedents relate exclusively to the exercise of the Prerogative of mercy, which is not involved at all in the matter which my hon. Friend wishes to raise.

Mr. Benn: May I submit three very brief points to you, Mr. Speaker? The first is that the rule of the House about the capital sentence is, as you pointed out, that it can be discussed only after the sentence has been carried out. It has also been ruled in the past, when a Motion has been made to adjourn the House under Standing Order No. 9, that the Adjournment cannot be made until all the information is available. I submit, first, that as the White Paper has been published only this afternoon it is this afternoon that is the earliest opportunity of discussing the case of a man upon whom sentence of death has been already carried out. This is the earliest moment that this House has been able to discuss the sentence of death carried out on the man Evans.
My second submission is one in which I support my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), that no question arises about the Prerogative of mercy in the case of the man Christie, whereas in the Ruling which you quoted on 27th January there was a specific reference to the question of the Prerogative of mercy. Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown, you will recall, in his Ruling used these words:
My remarks were, therefore, directed to the question of the Prerogative of mercy in the case of persons under sentence of death."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st May, 1947; Vol. 436, c. 2180–1.]
The other Ruling which you quoted, that of Mr. Speaker Whitley, used the words:
… I must make it quite clear that no question of the Adjournment can arise on the subject of the advice tendered to His Majesty by a Home Secretary with regard to a reprieve. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th June, 1922; Vol. 155, c. 205.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne said that in this case we are considering an administrative matter, the


date of execution, which is wholly within the province of the Home Secretary's responsibility and does not bear on any advice which he may give to the Crown.
I submit that the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, North (Mr. G. H. R. Rogers) would be fully met if a debate were held this afternoon on the findings of the tribunal in that then there would be no necessity to postpone the execution, because the House would have reached some sort of conclusion, however unsatisfactory, before the hour of execution which is already fixed.

Mr. Hector Hughes: May I respectfully make another submission to you, Mr. Speaker? I submit, with respect, that the real question that you have to consider now is whether this House is to be deprived of a very important witness in connection with the discussion which is about to take place. Presumably this House will be given an opportunity of discussing the Report which has been placed in our hands today. It may well be that the House may come to a certain decision about that Report which will involve a reconsideration of the Report and possibly a reconsideration of the evidence which has been given to the gentleman who reported; or some other course may be taken. It may well be that this House may find it necessary to advise that further evidence be taken. That may be the evidence of the man who is due to be executed tomorrow.
With the greatest respect, Mr. Speaker, I submit that the real question that you have to consider in this case is not the question of any interference with the Royal Prerogative, but the question whether this House is to be deprived of a witness who, in the event, may turn out to be an essential witness in further consideration of the matter which the House will have to discuss when the Report comes before us.

Mr. Speaker: I have listened with the greatest care to all that has been said by the three hon. Members who have spoken, and I had all these considerations thoroughly in view before I gave the answer which I gave to the hon. Member for Kensington, North (Mr. G. H. R. Rogers). In my view, there is no difference which justifies me in departing from the practice of the House on this occasion. All the considerations which

have been urged must be supposed to have been in the mind of the Home Secretary in exercising his discretion in this matter and therefore I say, and must say, that the rule and the practice of the House forbid me to admit a Question on this matter at this stage.

Mr. G. H. R. Rogers: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9:
To call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the necessity of the House to have an opportunity to discuss the Report of the tribunal appointed to inquire into the trial of Timothy John Evans before the execution of J. H. Christie.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9:
To call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the necessity of the House to have an opportunity to discuss the Report of the tribunal appointed to inquire into the trial of Timothy John Evans before the execution of J. H. Christie.
There again, I find that that is entirely covered by authority. This is, in fact, an attempt to move for the discussion, upon the Adjournment of the House, of a capital sentence which is pending, before the execution. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I say that that is not allowable by the Rules. I also point out that the House is going to resolve itself into Committee of Supply and that in Committee of Supply matters of various sorts can be raised, and that this could be raised if it were so desired. But it is not a matter on which I could accept a Motion under the Standing Order because it does not apply to that Standing Order.

Mr. S. Silverman: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9:
To call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the imminent execution of John Halliday Christie before the House has the opportunity of discussing the Evans Report.
In submitting that to you, Mr. Speaker, may I respectfully say that the intention is not in any way to discuss the capital sentence upon John Halliday Christie? What we desire to discuss is the Report of Mr. Scott Henderson on his inquiry into the execution of Timothy John Evans, which would certainly be in order.
What we are saying, with respect, is that that discussion ought to take place while Christie is alive and not afterwards,


for obvious reasons. The objection that the House must not discuss a capital sentence which is pending, I submit with respect, does not apply to this Motion. Nobody intends to discuss that, nobody wishes to discuss that at this moment. What we wish to discuss is not the capital sentence upon Christie but the execution of the capital sentence upon Evans, in the light of Mr. Scott Henderson's Report.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9:
To call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the imminent execution of John Halliday Christie before the House has the opportunity of discussing the Evans Report.
As a matter of fact, if the hon. Member refers to the Standing Orders he will find that only one Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 can be made in one day. But quite apart from that, what I have said previously covers this question. There must always be many reasons which could be urged, if the matters were permissible, for postponing the execution of a man who has been found guilty of murder. There must often be many such reasons, and this is just another. I am afraid that I must adhere to my decision.

Mr. Bowles: May I respectfully make another submission to you, Mr. Speaker? Would you be prepared to accept the first Motion, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, North (Mr. G. H. R. Roberts) asked leave to move, if the last three or four words referring to the execution of Christie were deleted? I submit respectfully that this rule applies only to a Motion for the Adjournment of today's business from seven o'clock to 10 o'clock, or whatever the hours may be, and if my hon. Friend were to delete from the Motion any reference to discussion of the Report "before the execution of J. H. Christie," surely it would be in order, because then it would make no reference whatever to the forthcoming execution.

Mr. Speaker: If all reference to Christie were omitted and it were merely a Motion on the Adjournment to discuss the Report on Evans, I could not find that within the Standing Order because that by itself could be discussed at any time.

Mr. Silverman: Is it not the case that it is not infrequent when the House finds itself in difficulty about the formulation of the Motion asking for the Adjournment that a number of hon. Members try their hand at a formulation which would be within the Standing Orders? That is not in conflict with the rule that there can be only one such Motion on one day.
With regard to my form of Motion, I submit, with respect, first, that no question of the capital sentence upon Christie is involved; secondly, that the question of the Evans Report is of public importance; and thirdly, that what makes the discussion of it urgent is the danger that, unless something happens today, by this time tomorrow a vital witness will have been removed. With respect, that seems to me to be a combination of all the essential factors which make a Motion of this kind important and to be in no way in conflict with the decisions of the House and its precedents relative to the exercise of the Prerogative of mercy.
The reasons the Prerogative of mercy must not be debated in this way are known to us all, but none of them applies in the remotest degree, or in any sense whatever, to a proposition that a discussion on another matter which is in order ought to be expedited before a vital witness is removed and silenced. The execution can take place later. Nothing will be prejudiced and nothing lost.

Mr. Speaker: I have great sympathy with what hon. Members have urged. I wish I could find it within my conscience to agree with them, but alas, I cannot, having given the matter every consideration.

Mr. Lewis: There is another point upon which I should like your advice, Mr. Speaker. Having heard and accepted your Ruling on the question of moving the Adjournment under Standing Order No. 9, am I right in assuming that on many occasions in the past, in the interests either of the House or of the public, or in cases where the Government have felt that it would be advantageous to do so, it has been the custom for the Government Chief Whip to rise, on his own volition, and ask for permission to move the Adjournment of the House to discuss an issue?
Would it be in order if the Government Chief Whip, realising the importance of this matter, rose and moved the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing the Report which has now been issued? Am I not right in assuming that that can be done without any reference to Standing Order No. 9?

Mr. Speaker: In answer to the hon. Member, so far as I am concerned, that question is at present hypothetical. If such a Motion were moved, I should have to make up my mind about it.

Mr. Lewis: I wanted your advice whether or not it would be in order for the Government Chief Whip to move the Adjournment of the House to discuss this Report.

Mr. Speaker: There is no doubt that it would be, but it has not been moved.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on the Isle of Man (Customs) Bill exempted, at this day's sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. Crookshank.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[20TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1953–54.

Motion made, and Question proposed.
That a further sum, not exceeding £105, be granted to Her Majesty, towards defraying the charges for the following services connected with Scottish Industry, Employment and Well-being for the year ending on 31st March, 1954, namely:—


Civil Estimates and Supplementary Estimates, 1953–54



£


Class I, Vote 25, Scottish Home Department
10


Class VI, Vote 1, Board of Trade
10


Class V, Vote 8, Ministry of Labour and National Service
10


Class VIII, Vote 13, Fisheries, Scotland



Class IX, Vote 6, Ministry of Fuel and Power
10


Class VIII, Vote 8, Forestry Commission
10


Class VIII, Vote 8, Forestry Commission (Supplementary Estimate)
5


Class V, Vote 17, Housing, Scotland
10


Class VIII, Vote 3, White Fish Authority
10


Class VII, Vote 1, Ministry of Works
10


Total
£105

SCOTTISH AFFAIRS

3.54 p.m.

Mr. A. Woodburn: My hon. Friends have chosen to utilise the two days normally devoted to the discussion of Scottish Estimates for the purpose of initiating a progress report debate on the state of the Scottish nation. We approach this task in the same spirit as we have done all the Estimates discussions in the Scottish Grand Committee this year, namely, that we are more concerned to find the right answer to our Scottish problems than to engage in a political tennis match rally of "whodunits" with the other side. The present Government will depart in due course, but we cannot say that of the problems.
We approach our examination conscious of the difficulties. The Royal Commission are taking evidence at Edinburgh,


and it is not yet apparent that any evidence published so far has offered a dramatic or easy solution to the many questions which the well-being of Scotland raises. In my view, there is no single road to Scottish prosperity. Success will come only if we enlist many agencies and forces. There are immediate as well as ultimate problems.
My hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), Leith (Mr. Hoy), Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes), Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson), Bothwell (Mr. Timmons), and Western Isles (Mr. M. MacMillan), who have been giving special study to questions of unemployment in Scotland, have met and discussed these with the Ministers concerned.
Some of the symptoms of unemployment may, we hope, be temporary, but some are the results of major Government policy, and there is a danger that, although the overall policy may change for the better the improvement in industry will not be so automatic as was the setback caused in the first case. For example, the decision to cut down imports, which was no doubt unavoidable at the time, has led to serious underemployment in the docks. This, in turn, damps down the optimism that leads to orders for shipbuilding, and if new orders do not come to the Clyde and shipbuilding slackens, distress spreads automatically over nearly half the population of Scotland.
Similarly, when the Government used an increase in the interest rates in order to reduce inflationary expansion, the indiscriminate nature of the instrument caused a slowing down of necessary as well as unnecessary enterprise. In the case of agriculture, it is our very desperate need for increased production which makes it necessary for us to bring in marginal land which is normally uneconomic, but there are also marginal factories which can just keep running and no more. In these cases a rise in interest rates may be just sufficient to cut the financial thread that keeps them afloat.
As an illustration of one such repercussion affecting one of the industries of central Scotland, the economies in housing, the cutting out of fireplaces in bedrooms, coincided with the cutting down of this type of export to many countries

overseas. Changes in some methods of production also took place and, altogether, these have dealt a grievous blow to an industry which, till very recently, was one of the bottlenecks in housing. Yet among the products of this industry are the very fuel economy stoves which the Ministry of Fuel and Power are desperately anxious to get installed in houses and offices throughout the country. The Government could help themselves and the industry if they coordinated the policy of supplying these stoves to houses and, at the same time, giving work to this industry.
These, and many other problems, will be discussed in detail by my hon. Friends. I should like the House to consider the wider question of what steps are necessary to ensure that, in future, Scotland has economic prosperity and social well-being. According to how well we plant now, so will the fruits of that enterprise be reaped by future generations in Scotland.
I recognise that we are not entirely masters of our fate. We must recognise that the world today is an economic unit and is struggling towards a world government which will hope to maintain law and order and ensure us peace and an orderly conduct of human affairs. Scotland cannot, and I am sure does not want to, avoid its share of responsibility in this connection. Scotland is the last country to become insular. Its sons are all over the world, and I have heard rumours that some have even gone to England and settled there.
Our largest productive industry is iron and steel in its various forms and its markets are largely abroad. A great proportion of our raw materials come from overseas and, therefore, in whatever plans we make for developments we must be ever conscious that these will be largely at the mercy of changes in the outside world beyond our control. It would be a dangerous illusion to proceed on the assumption that Scotland could be self-sufficient and still enjoy a sufficient and reasonable standard of life. Our present industries are to some extent determined by our natural resources, our past developments and future economic possibilities.
The foundation of Scotland's prosperity is, and will remain, coal. We can leave out of account for the present any


suggestion that coal will be replaced by atomic energy. As far as one can see, the capital costs involved in creating such plants will be very great, and coal therefore holds the field both in its use as a fuel and for the many by-products it provides. While we in Scotland have not yet ascertained the full reserves of coal that we have, the great new developments of the next 20 years are to be in the Lothians, Fifeshire, Clackmannan, Stirlingshire, and Ayrshire.
The theoretical plans provide for the simultaneous creation of supplementary industries to utilise the services of the miners' families. Those plans are becoming a little unstuck for two main reasons. The need for coal is so urgent that there must be concentration on providing homes and amenities for the miners, while in the Lothians there is now a shortage of land not subject to subsidence, where so much coal is to be extracted that it is difficult to find sites where factories could be built. The second difficulty is that there is no rush of industrialists wanting to start factories in these areas. In any case, there are 625 constituencies represented in the House and they are all spider constituencies, waiting to catch any available flies of this sort. I should therefore be glad to know whether the Secretary of State has found any answer to those problems.
Here, of course, we came up against the major issue of Government policy. Do the Government propose to leave this to chance and the Scottish Council of Industry or do they accept responsibility for playing their part in guiding Scotland to prosperity and taking the necessary steps to assist? Could the Secretary of State clear our minds on that point?
The letter which he addressed to the Scottish Council the other day commenting on the Cairncross Report made rather depressing reading. In effect, it said that while the Government would carry on the Development Area policy which we left to him, the thoughtful complementary suggestions of the Report were unnecessary. I hope he will correct that impression today, if it is wrong. I have tried to see this problem in its entirety and though my conclusions are not entirely those of the Cairncross Report, I have become seriously perturbed about the possible consequences

of following automatically the idea of priming new industry mostly to the Development Areas. Some Development Areas, such as that in my constituency, have had no new industry at all, and even in the distribution of new industries among the other Development Areas, there is an element of chance which may have serious eventual effects.
For some years we have concentrated, of course, on helping the West of Scotland and Dundee, and it is still true that the unemployment figures in the Development Areas are higher than in Scotland generally, but what is the Government's eventual policy for this great area in the West of Scotland? Has planning been given up altogether? Are we eventually to have a built-up area from Airdrie to Greenock?
Everybody agrees that Glasgow is already too congested and will have to build either upwards or outwards. We cannot put many more new industries into Glasgow without risking a further increase in its population, which would only intensify its difficulties. Could not some of its smaller and older workshops be transferred with their workers outside the city to leave room for the population inside to have breathing space? Glasgow gets little in the way of rates from these industries, and if the population is to go to the outskirts it would be easier to take some of its own industries with it than to search for new industries which do not exist.
It seems to be felt generally that the solution to all our problems is to introduce light industry, but clearly there is not sufficient light industry to supply all the areas which are trying to attract it, and I sympathise with the President of the Board of Trade who has to meet 625 clamouring demands for these mythical new industries. It is, therefore, wholly unrealistic to stake our hopes on the Board of Trade being able to offer firms who want to start up to suit all our needs. Indeed, we have new factories in the Development Areas which are not being properly used at the moment, in Chapelhall, Newhouse and some other districts in the West of Scotland.
The most done by the Government of which I was a member was to refuse permission to firms wishing to start up in areas like London which were already overdeveloped, by that means encouraging firms to ask for advice from the


Board of Trade as to where they should go. No Government since the war has taken upon itself the powers to direct either industry or the workers, and any Government is therefore left with this rather vague power of inducement.
The need for labour also compelled firms to go to Development Areas where the Government had built factories and where, in our case, in Scotland, the industrial estates were ready to welcome them. These pressures do not now exist to the same extent, but it would be interesting to hear from the President of the Board of Trade later in the debate what is now the Government's policy in these matters. Nothing could be more dangerous for Scotland than laissez faire, and I firmly believe that the Government should guide events not with an eye to ambulance assistance where trouble arises but with an eye to the future. There are certain industries which are located for us. We can do nothing about them. Shipbuilding is mainly on the Clyde, although if we were starting from scratch there are many authorities who think it would be much better settled on the Forth. Coal and agriculture are settled for us by natural conditions, which also largely determine where our textile factories have to be.
This has resulted in the distribution of Scottish population being quite lopsided. Out of an area of 30,000 square miles, we have our main industries and population crushed into a bare 1,000 square miles. This leaves great areas north and south of that industrial belt far too thinly populated. If this problem is left to the working of economic calculations by private firms, then this population will continue to gravitate to the great centres of population and the Scottish countryside will be further depopulated.
This cannot be a private matter. The State is distributing about £5 million to the counties of Scotland to redress the balance. It would be much healthier if we made this less and less necessary by providing these counties with more ratepayers to produce their own living. This problem is not confined to the Highlands. A penny rate in Selkirk produces only £84, while the Secretary of State's own constituency manages to produce only about £4 more—and although that

is in the North of Scotland, it does not count as a Highland constituency.
The Development Area policy has brought great benefits to many areas, but designating a district as a Development Area does not guarantee that any industry will go there. In my own area, south of Falkirk, we have so far not succeeded in inducing one firm to come. My colleagues agreed to making a Development Area in a considerable part of the Highlands and several unrealistic hopes have been aroused there. One enterprise had actually bought the land on which to erect a factory which was to use up all the scrap timber that accumulates on the forestry estates. That, unfortunately, collapsed. In present conditions I must confess that I see even less likelihood of private enterprise coming from elsewhere to start up in the Highlands.
I made a proposition to the Labour Government before the last Election that this had really to be thought about in a very careful way. If private enterprise is not going to accept the inducements of the Development Area in the Highlands, it seems to me that the Government themselves must take a hand somewhere. I suggested they might use their powers over certain of the nationalised industries and nationalised organisations to see whether some of them would go to the Highlands.
If not, and if we are to maintain health in the Highlands, the Government themselves must take a hand in putting some activity into the Highlands which will give them industrial health as well as population. We have already done that through the Forestry Commission, which has played a considerable part, and through the Hydro-Electric Board. We should be wise, therefore, not to waste too much time and effort chasing that will o' the wisp of mythical firms who were supposed, for some years now, to be coming to the Highlands. None has appeared.
Unless local authorities take a hand there is not likely to be any great success in the light industry suggestion. I am glad, therefore, that the Secretary of State in his comments on the Cairncross Report has called attention to the powers of the local authorities to help themselves. I have great faith in this aspect of the matter. If private firms are to be induced


to prefer one area to another, the local authorities, in collaboration with the Government, are in the best position to offer the necessary inducements. They can provide sites, they can even build and lease new factories for new enterprises; but what I believe may be even more important, they may be able to provide new factories for already existing industries within their own areas which ought to be expanded.
We must continually remind ourselves that there are not enough new industries to satisfy all the demands. This is where I think the Cairncross Report may have been a little over-optimistic, but nevertheless I believe its basic ideas are sound. We must help to develop industries throughout those county areas to give them the necessary mixed economy and a sufficiency of population to maintain essential services. It is in this direction, I am sure, that the Government could take more positive action which might be both successful and permanent.
We have benefited in Scotland from the introduction from England and from other countries—America, Italy and other countries—of certain enterprises. Their managers have expressed themselves as more than satisfied with the quality of the labour in Scotland and the skill and the adaptability of the workers they have employed. I know from experience that it is something of an effort to get people who live in the London area or the Midlands or Lancashire to uproot themselves and go to live in Scotland, but once they have become acclimatised, it is interesting to note, they settle down and become very happy in Scotland, and even become more Scottish than the Scots. Some of them are actually serving on some of the most impressively Scottish committees in Scotland, and fighting for Scotland when some of the Scots themselves are more apathetic.
Human problems are involved. Northward is not normally the direction of voluntary migrations. The tendency has been southward, and so far the Northern Star is not the one that has beckoned the Scots. They have been beckoned rather to the Southern Cross—and they do not know it is a cross until they arrive. On the whole it is better if the Scots people themselves can be induced to develop their own enterprises, and this would certainly be an easier policy in the sparsely

populated areas. It will be better to enable those counties to keep more of their indigenous population than to export them and try to import reluctant strangers. It is in this direction that the Government could make a satisfactory contribution.
In modern times a considerable proportion of the orders for manufactured and engineering goods stem from Government-controlled sources. I do not think we realise how much of our enterprise and industry is based on the foundation of Government orders. The direction of these orders can determine the decay or the growth of a district just as effectively as the fertiliser subsidy can stimulate, or its want retard, the growth of agriculture. I have been in the Ministry of Supply, and I know how difficult it is to introduce new complications into the ordering procedure, because it is economical to deal with a few big firms, although it is a complete illusion to think that the big firms are the most important part of our economy in this country. I think that the Minister of Supply is mistaken in thinking that big firms like Armstrong Whitworth are the most important part of industry in this country. The main part of our industry lies in the multitude of small and highly specialised firms, not in the great and far-reaching octopus-like tentacles of the big firms.
I appreciate that increases of staff would be needed to add the duties of distributing orders geographically, of inspection and accounting, but I remember that when Sir Andrew Duncan was Minister of Supply during the war I discovered that, because certain great organisations in England were actually using the Excess Profits Tax as a weapon to reduce their prices below the economic prices, they were gradually attracting to themselves all the orders, and many of the textile industries were simply being wiped out, and I asked Sir Andrew Duncan to inquire into it. In the interval he became President of the Board of Trade, but he went back to the Ministry of Supply and he discovered that that was actually the case, and he gave instructions that, in addition to the distribution of orders according to price, there was to be distribution according to the geographical capacity of the country to fulfil the orders. Something of that kind, I think, ought to be effected now.
In addition to these difficulties, there is a solid block of resistance to the Minister of Supply from industrialists—and their wives, as a matter of fact—to any suggestion that industry should move very far from London. I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman in his difficulties. So far that has frustrated what was, and what supposedly is still, the Government's policy to ensure the strategic dispersal of industry. It needed a collection of "doodle bugs" and V2s to persuade industries to move very far from London: and now they have all come back. I am quite sure that the Minister of Supply, despite all his power of persuasion, has not been any more successful than we were in this matter, but in the event of war we shall have too many eggs in the London basket. There has been no substantial dispersal.
We tried to persuade firms to develop in Scotland. We tried to persuade a scientific instruments firm to go, and offered them orders if they did so, but they were so satisfied with sitting, so to speak, on the Ministry's doorstep and having orders fed to them that they would not move themselves to undertake this development even for the sake of their own industry. We tried to put a camera industry in Scotland, to induce them and other firms to go to dispersal areas in Scotland, but we were unsuccessful in the attempt. It was partly due to the lack of enterprise on the part of some of my own countrymen.
Sir Stafford Cripps tried to persuade certain people in Scotland to start an aircraft industry during the war. If that industry had been established, it would have been there still, because no Government would ever have dared to close down the aircraft industry in Scotland once it had been established there. They could not have kept 12 or 14 establishments going in England and closed one down in Scotland. That industry would have been left.
However, the chance was missed, and I feel that it is never likely to recur owing to the difficulty of finding a suitable location with sufficient resources of labour and the capital necessary for such an enterprise. I think the time for that has gone. Our topography, the contours of our land, are not suitable for finding

flat airstrips, and where there is such flat land there is not a population to employ in such an industry.
What I ask the Government to consider in dealing with Scottish needs is whether it would not be possible speedily to influence and direct orders to existing engineering, textile and other establishments in the at present under-manned counties and allow them gradually to develop into bigger units. There are efficient small engineering and textile organisations in many of the small towns throughout Scotland. If they got the orders they could deal with them just as efficiently as places in the well-trained centres, but they require the encouragement of the Government to start. The Government may say that they might at first have to give them some encouragement and assistance, but would it not be better to give assistance in that form than to go on increasing the equalisation grant to keep these counties alive and the necessary services in existence?
If Government Departments could have a co-ordinated policy in this regard, it might be an economy for the Ministry of Labour and for the Secretary of State for Scotland in his equalisation grant to allow the Ministry of Supply and the Board of Trade to spend a little more money in that direction. I am all for it. I suggest that mechanically-minded lads are being driven from the East of Scotland and the North of Scotland down to Glasgow and Edinburgh, to clutter up the population there, when they might become engineers on their own doorstep in Hawick and Selkirk and provide a varied industry in the counties themselves. That, I think, would be helpful to the whole countryside and to the country as a whole.
The Ministry of Supply and the Government generally ought to know how effective this policy proved during the war. It was effective. It was my duty in the Ministry of Supply to visit many engineering works throughout the country and some highly efficient work was done by firms which had developed in this way from motor engineers, agricultural engineers, and all sorts of light engineers in various areas. Some of these firms I was asked to visit as a commendation for the splendid work they did. All that departed after the war, and all that industry has gone to the big towns. There


were such firms in Brechin, Fraserburgh and Kirkcaldy, for example, and some of the finest engineering done in Scotland was done in Brechin. Most of that engineering work has now gone with the wind.

Sir Robert Boothby: I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman means by "gone with the wind." We have one of the finest light engineering firms in the world in Fraserburgh.

Mr. Woodburn: I am glad to hear that it is still there and that the wind remains with the hon. Gentleman. The Government have just decided to give an extra £1¾ million in the equalisation grant. I would hesitate to endorse the idea of the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) that this should be swallowed up in the housing subsidy or even for the purposes I am advocating. But the Government might consider, when they are thinking of the next steps to help these areas, whether it would not be worth while for the Ministry of Supply and the Board of Trade to be given a special duty of giving development orders to firms in outlying areas. This would achieve the Government's purpose of gradually dispersing industry and population and reversing the continuing trend for everyone to make for the big towns.
Whatever the Government may say with their lips about freeing enterprise and all the rest of it, they know that they cannot go back to laissez faire. No Government can do so. I challenge this Government to say that it is going to leave everyone swimming in the sea of competition. United Kingdom Ministers have their varied responsibilities and their duties to Britain as a whole. Therefore, the main burden of planning Scotland's future must rest firmly on the Secretary of State for Scotland. I appreciate that he has not hesitated to carry on any good work which was initiated by his predecessors, but general abandonment of controls and the slackening of the regulation of trade are bringing new difficulties of a peace-time character.
There is much fear of a slump in Scotland. The trends of population are still in the wrong direction. In London and this area it is still increasing; in Scotland and areas in the North of England it is still decreasing. We would be wise to

have an overall policy. In a world of cut-throat economic competition Scotland will still be handicapped by distance and transport problems. We give subsidies to stimulate the cultivation of marginal land. I see no difference in principle, if we are to spend money, in subsidising and stimulating marginal factories, especially if they are going to make for social well-being.
Overall policy must be guided not only by economic advantage, but must be determined to some extent by the social needs of the people. Scots people want to earn their living; they also believe in trade, not aid. Much has already been done in this direction by the Forestry Commission and the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, and both the Southern and Western Electricity Boards have done a great deal to stimulate and help agriculture. The principle of industrial stimulation has been established and has been accepted by the Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) the other day initiated a debate on agriculture in the Scottish Grand Committee. It remains an essential part of our economy, and cannot be ignored. While it may not form the main subject of our debate today, it certainly is an essential and integral part of any comprehensive policy.
Our future depends perhaps more than anything on the quality of our people, and it would be wrong not to emphasise the importance of Scotland maintaining and improving its standards in education and scientific achievement. The Advisory Council on Scientific Policy indicates in its report that there are far too few scientists, and the Joint Under-Secretary of State, who is to wind up this debate, tells us that Scotland is producing only one graduate for every 2,500 of our population, whereas in America they are producing one graduate of this kind for every 1,600, and Scotland, even with that deficiency, is exporting graduates to England, where the proportions are even worse.
So this country has obviously to consider very carefully its educational policy, and I respectfully suggest to the Joint Under-Secretary that it is false economy to cut down on education, because unless this country uses its brains and sells its brains, it cannot maintain a population of


50 million. The Joint Under-Secretary also tells us—and this was the case when I was Secretary of State for Scotland—that Scottish firms are still using too little science to survive the keen winds of competition. Both these statements are a blow to our educational pride and, like other hard realities, we shall succeed only if we regard them as a stimulation to better efforts. Here the Government play a principal part in determining our educational standards, and I hope that they will look very carefully at any cheeseparing policy which is likely to prevent the Scottish people from developing their maximum capacity.
It will become clear as this debate proceeds that the many problems of Scotland cannot be treated in separate compartments but that they are all so inter-connected that they call for comprehensive and co-ordinated treatment. Neither can they be isolated from general Government policy. It will be helpful, therefore, if the Secretary of State can give the House a picture of the general pattern of his policy for Scotland, and we shall look forward to hearing in more detail from himself and his colleagues how this policy will work out in the different spheres.
There are a large number of bodies to offer him advice. It is a remarkable number of bodies. He himself has the Highland Panel and a Highland Industries Organisation, and we are told by the Press that he is going to make an important pronouncement about Highland policy when he follows me in this debate. We shall certainly look forward to hearing this, because it is advisable that we should have a Highland policy. The Highlands cannot live without a policy, and therefore all these things must be co-ordinated. We anticipate that in the course of his speech the right hon. Gentleman will outline his new policy for the Highlands.
The Board of Trade, or maybe the Treasury, has the Scottish Board for Industry, and there have been reports on Aberdeen fishing and the Border industries; and now there is the Cairncross Report. There is also a Committee under Lord Bilsland which seems to embrace representatives from Government Departments. I would like also to

hear from the Secretary of State how all these activities are co-ordinated. Are they brought together in any way by the Secretary of State?
When I was Secretary of State, I set up a Scottish Economic Council so that all these bodies could at least learn directly from Members of the Government what our policy was, but I do not know what my successor has put in its place today so that all the bodies running Scotland are brought together and given an idea of Government policy and can hear each other's policy. We are not likely to have a separate Government for Scotland—there are many arguments against this—but quite clearly that does not exclude the need for a co-ordination of our policy by the head of the Government in Scotland.
Since we have not such a body as the Scottish Economic Council, my hon. Friends and I thought that this debate would at least serve the purpose of allowing the Government to put their comprehensive policy before the Committee and before the country. The Scottish Trades Union Congress has asked for the resuscitation of the Economic Council. Could we have a White Paper giving a list of all the bodies in Scotland that advise the Secretary of State and could we be told what their various activities are and whether they are overlapping in any way?
I do not want to criticise anyone in particular, but I have heard reports to the effect that some of these bodies serve no useful purpose at all, that people are brought from their ordinary activities to sit at their meetings, which, in turn, do not seem to get anywhere. It does not do these bodies any good to develop such a reputation. Therefore, I hope that the President of the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Treasury will look at these committees to see whether they are now serving a serious purpose, and, if they are not, will give them some purpose, or else wind them up. In any case, we would like to know who carries out the conclusions reached by them. Do the conclusions come to the Government in any concrete form, and who is responsible for putting them into operation?
As far as I can see, the Ministry of Labour is the only organisation which is


in intimate touch with local industry in Scotland. The Ministry is almost like an artery going into every part of Scotland It must have a collection of vital information, not only about the statistics of labour, but also about the possibilities of doing something to help the less known districts. I should like to know what machinery there is for enabling the Secretary of State and the Government to know the conclusions reached by the Ministry of Labour concerning what ought to be done for these industries.
When the late Ernest Bevin was in charge of the Ministry of Labour, he regarded it as his business to see that the Ministry not only collected statistics, but also inspired the Government. He had a considerable amount of power to push the Government along. I hope that the Secretary of State will emulate his good efforts and will kick in the pants anybody who seems to be getting in the way of the job being done. We will give him every support in that direction.
The Scottish people will do a lot for themselves, but they are anxious to know about the future, and they must know where they are going. I tried in my humble way to give a direction, but, as I say, circumstances have changed, and we have to face a new set of problems. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is now thinking about what he is going to say to the Scottish people. It is to him that they must look for guidance, because, however much other Ministers may be responsible for Scotland, I can assure them that when it comes to Scottish problems the Secretary of State will be held responsible. Therefore, I hope that they will co-operate under his leadership to carry out a co-ordinated policy.
I now propose to give way to the right hon. Gentleman so that he can give us a lead by outlining his comprehensive policy for Scotland. If he does that, I am sure that people of all parties and views will loyally support him, because, whatever his policy, our country looks up to him and gives him respect. I pay my tribute to those people of opposite political opinions to mine who, when I was the representative of the Government in Scotland, gave me loyal support and every help in carrying out activities for the benefit of Scotland. I can assure the Secretary of State that he will get that

same response from the workers as well as the employers of Scotland, but they must know what they are expected to do. If he gives them a lead, then the Scots will, I hope, march forward to greater prosperity.

4.38 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. James Stuart): I wish to say at the outset how sincerely grateful I am to the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) for the helpful words he used at the end of his speech, and for the whole tone of what he had to say. As he said, some hon. Members opposite recently met my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Labour, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade and myself to discuss some points and to consider the lay-out of this debate. I understood from them at that meeting that it was their desire that this debate should proceed on constructive lines. I am sure that it is general wish of the Committee, and I certainly have no desire to do anything which would raise the temperature unduly.
I am also grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his opening words, and I shall endeavour in the course of my remarks to deal with some of the points which he raised. Later this evening, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour will be speaking, and early tomorrow, I am very glad to say, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will speak and my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will wind up the debate tomorrow night. I hope that this lay-out is one which will meet the general wishes of the Committee, and I think that between us we shall be able to cover the majority of points raised during the course of these two days.
As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, we recently had a debate on agriculture in Standing Committee, and for that reason I had not intended to deal with it in this debate. Indeed, I do not think that the Vote is on the Order Paper but I would point out, if I may do so without being out of order, that it does not mean that agriculture has been forgotten. The importance to our life in Scotland of stepping up agricultural production is, of course, as great as ever.
I noted what the right hon. Gentleman said on the subject of technical education.


I am in general agreement with him on that matter, but if there are any further points on that subject on which he wants clarification, I hope he will allow my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State to deal with them later.

Mr. John Rankin: There seems to be some doubt whether certain matters may be raised, Major Anstruther-Gray, but, so far as I understand, this debate covers the well-being of Scotland, and if that is the case, then surely almost any topic affecting the well-being of Scotland must be in order.

The Temporary Chairman (Major Anstruther-Gray): The position is not quite as the hon. Member has said. This debate covers the well-being of Scotland only in so far as the Votes on the Order Paper are concerned.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: The Votes on the Order Paper include the salary of the Secretary of State, and I submit that, in the circumstances, anything appertaining to the administration of Scotland which comes within the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State would be in order.

Sir R. Boothby: May I point out that if some of us who sit for the North of Scotland are not to discuss the question of agriculture and fisheries we shall be disappointed. Surely fishing, agriculture and Scotland cannot be separated. I do not see how we can discuss the well-being of Scotland if we do not talk about agriculture.

The Temporary Chairman: Although fisheries are included and, as has been said, the salary of the Secretary of State is included, agriculture is not specifically included.

Mr. T. Fraser: I am sorry if I seem to be intervening unnecessarily, but I assume some responsibility for this selection of Votes. My original selection of Votes constituted a long list, including many which are now not included. Many of those which were taken out of my original list were taken out on the advice of the House authorities, because we were assured that any matter which could properly be discussed in relation to the economic well-being of Scotland would

be in order within the Votes which are now on the Order Paper. That is why the list which was originally drawn up has been severely curtailed.

Lieut. Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: As we know, the debate will be continued tomorrow. Will there, tomorrow be a Vote that is not on the Order Paper today, covering the well-being of Scotland, or when will we who want to speak on other subjects, if we are lucky enough, have an opportunity of stating our views?

The Temporary Chairman: I know of no reason why a further Vote should not be added to the list which is now under discussion.

Mr. Hector Hughes: To avoid any misunderstanding, Major Anstruther-Gray, am I to assume that the debate will permit discussion on the subject which links all trade and commerce in Scotland together, namely, transport?

The Temporary Chairman: Transport is specifically mentioned on the Order Paper. If the Committee will carry on, I do not think hon. Members will find that the Chair is unduly severe.

Mr. J. Stuart: If the Committee will look on the Order Paper they will see a whole list of Votes. I have no desire to curtail debate at all. I think hon. Members will find that they can cover a fairly wide field, which may well take up a considerable time. I think that as my own salary is down for discussion, it obviously covers a good many subjects.
When this Government took office at the end of 1951 the country as a whole was facing a serious economic crisis, and drastic action had to be taken—not action of a popular character, of course—but the result was that in 1952 we experienced a very difficult year because severe import restrictions had to be imposed and resulted in a falling off in vital exports due to the action taken by certain other countries in the sterling area.
On the whole, we have been progressing since then. The gold and dollar reserves of the sterling area are approximately one-third higher than at the beginning of last summer, and our industrial production has recovered from the setback which it experienced in 1952.


Inflation has been held in check, and we can now contemplate some increase in the output of goods and services without being frustrated and held back by shortages of steel and other vital materials such as was the case.
With regard to production in Scotland, people were naturally perturbed by the fall in the first three-quarters of 1952. This is set out in the Digest of Scottish Statistics. However, the figures for the full year have now been calculated, and I am glad to say that good progress was made in the last quarter. The fall had been checked by the end of the year, and the figure for the last quarter of 1952 was equal to that for the last quarter of 1951. For the whole of the year 1952 the figure was 11 per cent. higher than for 1948.
Unemployment, to which reference has rightly been made, has, of course, been a source of concern to all Governments since and, indeed, before the war. I am glad to say that there has been an improvement in the latest published figures. Whereas in January, 1953, the figures of unemployed were 81,541, at 15th June they had fallen to 56,556. I admit that this is partly a seasonal decline, but the decrease is far greater than the normal, and to that extent the figure is satisfactory and, indeed, better. In fact, it is an indication of the general improvement in our trading position. I admit, also, that Scotland has greater leeway to make up than has her southern neighbour. The present figure of 2·7 per cent. compares with 3·2 per cent. in June, 1952, and is back to the same percentage figure as for June, 1950.
As to the measures which can be taken to help deal with this employment problem in Scotland, this subject covers a wide field, and the reason I have referred to it in opening is that, in the first place, we must have sound economic conditions in this country. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will, no doubt, refer to other measures tomorrow, but I should like briefly to refer to the three main areas of serious unemployment. These are the Development Areas, the North-Eastern Zone, including Buckie and Peterhead, and the Highland area.
The Development Areas, as hon. Members know, include much of the old-established industry in Scotland. They also include much new industry which is

now taking root in Scotland—for example, mechanical engineering developments—and much of this new development is due to the special attention which has been devoted by successive Governments under the Distribution of Industry Acts. The achievements of that policy have resulted in suggestions made from various quarters that this policy should be applied to other parts of the country. But I suggest that dilution of the policy would defeat its own ends.
This brings me to the Government's decision about the Cairncross Report. This was fully debated in the House on 25th February, when the President of the Board of Trade spoke on this subject, and I will not repeat what he then said. I also wrote recently to the Chairman of the Scottish Council, Lord Bilsland; the right hon. Gentleman referred to that letter in the course of his speech.
I am sure that all will agree in desiring to help and nourish new industrial development, but where the Government part company from the Report is in its implication that this should be at the expense of the Development Areas. This may not have been the intention of those who wrote the Report but I am afraid that, provided that the amount of Government help is limited that would be the result.
It is precisely the same as if one has a pot of jam and is then given more slices of bread to smear it over—the more slices the more thinly spread does the jam become. The heaviest burden of unemployment is still concentrated in the Development Areas. Therefore, we feel that it is in those areas that we must still concentrate the main energies.
I should like to refer to one other point in connection with the Report which described this work as being in the nature of salvage operations. I suggest to the Committee that in many instances the distribution of industry policy has brought new life and hope to those areas, so that it is not quite fair, in my opinion, to refer to the work which has been done merely as "salvage."
Further, I should like to suggest to the Committee that the policy which the Government are pursuing is sufficiently flexible to help with developments elsewhere. For example, take the great development at Grangemouth, which is not in a


Development Area. In Fife, there is building the new town of Glenrothes. Buckie and Peterhead, to which the President of the Board of Trade referred on 25th February, has been selected for special treatment, and discussions are now going on, and have been going on lengthily with the Scottish Council in connection with that.
In the Highlands, special measures are being taken, but I will, if I may, refer to the general Highland question in a few minutes. All I wish to say about this development policy is that new projects brought forward for other areas will be encouraged in every way in which we can give encouragement, but I do not believe that to schedule new areas as Development Areas is necessarily the right policy, for the reasons which I have given; and we must concentrate our energies, which are necessarily to some extent limited, on the areas which we believe to be most in need of that attention.
I referred at the beginning of my speech to the importance of agriculture, which no one will deny. Three other traditional basic industries in Scotland are steel, coalmining and shipbuilding. I shall also refer later to fishing, which is another. The higher rate of crude steel production which was visible in the second half of 1952 has been maintained. Production in the first quarter of 1953 was 23 per cent. above that in the same quarter of 1952. From the Scottish point of view this is distinctly encouraging, as the increase for the whole of the United Kingdom for the same period was 14 per cent. whereas in Scotland it was 23 per cent. Production in April and May this year is the highest since 1950.
This increase in steel production has been brought about by the improvement in the supply of materials, particularly scrap, and the higher rate of production should, I believe, be maintained throughout the year. Further developments are now under consideration affecting the steel industry in Scotland. Among these, it is generally recognised that a vital factor is the expansion of pig-iron production. Supplies of steel to consumers both in Scotland and in the United Kingdom are now considerably better. It is significant that stocks held by consumers in Scotland rose by 17 per cent. in the second half of 1952.
The coal industry, as hon. Members who have intimate knowledge of this industry will be aware, is now in the midst of a period of great change, and I think it is a tribute to those concerned with this transition that there has been comparatively little disturbance. Most—82 per cent.—of the miners in effective employment who became redundant owing to the closure of collieries since 1948 have been placed elsewhere. The labour employed has risen slightly, and the output of saleable coal in Scotland has risen by about 0·5 per cent. for the first five months of 1953 as compared with the same period of 1952. That does not mean that output is anything like as high as the Government would wish but it is rather remarkable what has been achieved during this period of transition. The new pits are going ahead——

Mr. Woodburn: Would the Secretary of State make clear his reference to 82 per cent. of the miners?

Mr. Stuart: The reference was to 82 per cent. of those who had been displaced due to the closing of pits.
The first five months of 1953 saw a quarter of a million tons of new merchant shipping completed. This represents 45 per cent. of the United Kingdom total and the highest monthly rate of completion since the war. I believe that there has been some anxiety about certain cancellations of orders totalling 53,000 tons. While this is, of course, a serious matter it is, nevertheless, not too bad in comparison with the total orders because the industry has new work to start on which will cover the next three years.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Can the Secretary of State say why there have been cancellations, and whether anything can be done to remedy the situation?

Mr. Stuart: It is partly due, possibly, like the dock labour problem, to the restriction of imports. I hope that as conditions improve that will disappear.

Mr. Hughes: Shortage of supplies?

Mr. Stuart: No, I think the steel supplies are all right, but I will ask one of my hon. Friends whether he can say something on that.
Turning to electrical developments in 1952, there was an increase of approximately 9 per cent. in the power produced


in Scotland as a whole, and in the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board area 11 per cent. more was produced than in the previous year. The whole of this increase in the North of Scotland area was due to water-power installations, and in Scotland as a whole there was no increase in the consumption of solid fuel in order to achieve the increased production of electricity. I am glad to say that development is progressing steadily and that many more consumers have been linked up during the past year.
I turn to the fishing industry, which is another of Scotland's basic industries; and its prosperity is, therefore, of great importance to the well-being of a large area of the country. In 1952, the landings of herrings and white fish were higher than in 1951, the value of the total catch being £11,728,000, or 5 per cent. higher than in 1951. The herring catch last year was the best since 1948, when more boats were at work. I regret that so far this year landings have been disappointing, herring landings being down by about 7 per cent. and in value by about 17 per cent. As a result of the poor quality of the herring, curers have been unable to obtain enough suitable herring to cure, though the new Russian contract has provided an outlet for sales. We can only hope that there will be an improvement in the catch later.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) brought this matter to my attention. It is most unfortunate that at Lerwick the fishermen have been suffering so acutely from the fall of landings, although the only really good quality herring landed have been at Lerwick. The situation has, naturally, caused great anxiety, and I was very sorry, when the appeals went out for financial help to help the fishermen and curers, that neither the Herring Board nor the Government could help them. I am very glad to be able to co-operate with the Board in carrying out an echo survey of the Shetland grounds, and I believe that the Department's own vessel is now on its way to the grounds to help locate the shoals.
The numerous activities and plans of the Herring Industry Board are described in their latest annual report. Their aims, briefly, are to extend the home and export market by improvement in the quality of kippers and by producing more attractive

types; and, secondly, to provide further facilities for the reduction of herring to oil and meal. The Government and the Board are co-operating in these endeavours and the new Russian deal is, I think, evidence of our efforts to help in every way that we can.
The latest report of the White Fish Authority was published on 9th July. I confess that the Authority is confronted with a difficult task, because they have to deal with an industry which is divided into many sections and facing very many difficulties. In the first place, I think that the Authority were wise to try to get the voluntary agreement of the industry to measures of betterment. There has been much opposition, and a good deal of it from some of those who have been criticising that more has not been done, but, I am afraid that the progress made has not been either fast or spectacular. Again, the Authority have gained much valuable information which will form the basis for the formulation of schemes to improve the organisation of the industry, although, in the present form, I feel that all this may not necessarily be highly popular.
The 1952 white fish catch was slightly heavier than the 1951 catch, but its value has fallen. I also regret that the catch for the first five months of 1953 has been lower in quantity and value. The seine net fishermen have done better in 1952 and the catch is up by 12 per cent. and the value by 7 per cent., but the trawlers and the rest of the fleet did not have satisfactory fishings. They have suffered from greatly increased costs, and the result was that in April last, as the Committee will be aware, the Government made a substantial increase in the white fish subsidy for boats over 70 ft. in length. Another trouble is the ageing trawler fleet. Many of the boats are very old, and, as the Committee knows, a scheme of grants to assist the building of new boats was authorised.
With regard to Highland questions, to which I should like to refer at this stage, the Government are following the accepted policy set out in the published programme of Highland development. My noble Friend the Minister of State, Scottish Office, recently spoke of the four roads to Highland prosperity, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and industry. We shall continue to advance along those lines and do what we can to help what are really the Highland basic industries upon


which our prosperity must depend. The present day output of Highland agriculture is valued at little less than £16 million a year, and I hope that that will be increased. But I cannot at this stage say anything about the plans for assisting the improvement of crofting agriculture. That must await the report of the Taylor Commission.
The Forestry Commission are planting at a rate of 14,000 acres a year and that rate will increase. In the wake of the Commission we see these new forestry villages taking shape, and since 1950 the Government have approved £600,000 worth of work to help the fishing harbours in the Highlands. This is a major step towards re-equipping and helping the fishing industry, and, in addition, there are, of course, measures to help with the provision of modern and efficient boats and gear.
Here, I want to say something on the subject of peat. We only reached agreement on this matter yesterday and I would be grateful, in view of the importance of the matter, if the Committee will bear with me if I make what I hope will not be too long a considered statement on the subject. As hon. Members know, a committee under the chairmanship of Sir Edward Appleton has for some time been investigating the possibility of developing Scottish peat deposits. Their report is in an advanced stage of preparation and, meanwhile, the committee, with the support of Sir William Stanier's Gas Turbine Committee, have specifically recommended that the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, with assistance from the Development Fund, should set up an experimental peat-burning power station at Altnabreac, Caithness. I am very glad to say that this recommendation has been accepted by the Development Commissioners and the Treasury, and the project will be put in hand at once.
The plant will consist partly of a 2,000 kilowatt closed cycle gas turbine of the type developed by Messrs. John Brown and Co., of Clydebank. The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and Messrs. John Brown and Co. have been working at the closed cycle gas turbine since 1947 and an oil-burning turbine of this type, the first in Great Britain, is

expected to be in operation at Carolina Port, Dundee, in three or four months' time. A pilot gas turbine burning dried peat has also run for 1,000 hours at Clydebank with promising results, and the new peat plant will be a development of this.
In addition, the scheme will include a 750 kilowatt open cycle turbine which has been manufactured by Messrs. Ruston and Hornsby of Lincoln to the order of the Ministry of Fuel and Power out of a grant from the Development Fund and which will be installed as soon as it has completed the necessary tests and is in full working order. It is estimated that the whole pilot scheme will take three to four years to construct.
The whole of the previous experimental costs have been borne from the Development Fund. The capital and development costs of the present scheme, estimated at approximately £500,000, will be met mainly from the Development Fund with contributions from the Hydro-Electric Board and the British Electricity Authority, and the running costs will be borne by the Hydro-Electric Board.
If this scheme is successful it would be the intention of the Hydro-Electric Board to proceed to larger schemes on a number of suitable areas in the Highlands. This would make an immense difference to the economic outlook for the Highlands in that not only will the peat schemes themselves provide a most welcome addition to our fuel and power supplies and employment in areas where it is badly needed; but if excavation supports the evidence of preliminary borings we can look forward to the reclamation of large areas of land for agriculture and forestry after the peat has been cleared, providing a permanent livelihood for a larger population.
It is estimated by the peat committee that approximately 600 million tons of peat solids are available in Scotland in areas where depth, accessibility and other features make them suitable for utilisation. Of these, Caithness and Sutherland contain approximately 130 million tons. Should the experiment in Caithness succeed, the Hydro Board estimate that further plants in Caithness and Sutherland alone, might provide employment, part-seasonal and part-regular for 400 to 500 men.
I am sure that the Committee would agree that Sir Edward Appleton's Committee, the Hydro Board and the Ministry of Fuel deserve to be congratulated on this project, and I should like to express my thanks to the Development Commissioners and the Chancellor for the support they have given to it. I heard yesterday on this matter from the Chairman of the Hydro-Electric Board, Mr. Johnston, to whom I also would express my sincere gratitude for his help and the co-operative attitude which he has displayed in this as in other fields.
The basic services in the Highlands are not being neglected, 1,500 houses were built last year and the rate this year shows an increase. The number should be nearer 2,000. The amount of money available for water supplies has also been increased. The need for the improvement of Highland roads has always been recognised. The Prime Minister declared his intention to
give all the aid the Government can give … to develop, particularly by better communications, the distinctive life of the Highlands and Islands.
The Highlands cannot be considered entirely apart from the rest of the country and the vital need for restoring economic and financial stability has made it impossible for the Government so far to start major schemes of reconstruction.
This is not to say that nothing has been done. Several construction schemes have been kept in progress, and next month, for example, will see the opening of the bridge to Bernera, in Lewis. In all, in 1952–53 about £1½ million have been spent on Highlands roads, towards which the Exchequer has contributed about £1¼ million. My right hon. Friends the Minister of Transport, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have been considering whether it is possible now to increase that. As was announced last week in another place by the Secretary of State for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel and Power, an additional £1 million is to be spent this year on essential road maintenance and improvement work throughout the United Kingdom. Scotland, the Highlands, will also get part of that—[HON. MEMBERS: "How much?"] I cannot say at the moment.
In addition, my right hon. Friend and I have been much impressed by a

reasoned recommendation by the Advisory Panel on the Highlands and Islands which sets out the general case for road improvement work necessary to develop the Highlands and to give their natural industries—here, I would stress again forestry, agriculture and fisheries, in particular—a better chance. The Committee will agree I am sure that this was the right approach to the problem. To put all the Highland roads in perfect order would require a very much larger sum than we can afford at present. The panel estimated that the highway authorities in the Highlands could usefully spend an extra £1 million a year for the next 15 years at least, if they had the funds. Much, however, can be done with less money if it is spent wisely, and the Government have decided to undertake additional work on Highland roads during the next three years, amounting to about £1 million in all.
It is intended that half of this should be started this year and the remainder in the following two years. The Argyll and Sutherland County Councils have already been asked to take tenders for the St. Catherines-Strachur and Borgie-Naver Bridge roads. Urgent consideration is being given to the difficult task of deciding which other roads should be selected, but two criteria will be kept in mind; that the work should primarily aid the development of the basic Highland industries, and that the roads selected should be capable of being started as quickly as possible.
I have kept the Committee for some time——

Mr. A. C. Manuel: Carry on.

Mr. Stuart: Thank you. It was, of course, a wide field to cover.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about separate Committees and how their reports and suggestions are co-ordinated. I remember that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) raised the question the other day. If we take the Cairncross Report, or the McColl Report on the fishing industries in Aberdeen, for example, these go through the Scottish Council. I am very ready to look into this matter to see whether the reports are properly co-ordinated. They do reach St. Andrew's House, where we


do our best to deal with these matters, but I have noted the point raised and I would like time to consider——

Mr. James McInnes: We are not so much concerned with the co-ordination of reports as about the co-ordination of the various committees, of which there are approximately 14. Our desire is to have them co-ordinated into one unit which will be really active and have some executive authority.

Mr. Stuart: I remember that the point was made the other day by the hon. Gentleman. He held the view that there are too many committees, and that may be the case, but I should like to look into the matter if I may have a little time to do so.
The right hon. Gentleman said there were not enough new industries to come to all these places. The President of the Board of Trade will be speaking tomorrow and all I would say now is that I do not think we want to have too rigid a rule. What we should aim at is a flexible method of dealing with these questions. We cannot force industry to go to a particular place. We must try to influence them and attract them to the places most likely to suit them, and where their help is most needed. I think the President will agree with that. I hope that I have said enough to show that within our limited resources during 1953 we have made progress. It is our intention to maintain this progress and to go forward as and when conditions permit.
Apart from certain black spots to which I have referred, the employment situation in Scotland generally is definitely better and more or less satisfactory. I am not saying that that refers to the black spots in the Highlands or the Development Areas. The great thing is to have more production and to step it up so that we are able, as a nation, to help ourselves. The Government will do all they can to help, but in the end the result depends not merely on the efforts of the Government but on the efforts of all of us, the whole working population of Scotland. I trust that, together, we shall succeed in making our country as a whole self-supporting, relying on no one. In this, Scotland has a great part to play.

5.18 p.m.

Mr. William Hannan: We have listened with deep interest to the speech of the Secretary of State, particularly to that part dealing with new development in Scotland. It would be ungracious of me and of hon. Members on this side of the Committee if we did not say at once that we welcome this as something which will help, in particular, the black spots in the Highlands of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke. We should remember that the institution, the planning of these things, was done some years ago. As far back as 1947, I think the right hon. Gentleman indicated, a committee was set up, and it should be remembered that, in the main, public money and public enterprise has had to assist.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will believe that my next point is made in no churlish spirit. It is a welcome development to have an early statement from the Minister, so that we can argue about it during our discussions rather than wait until the end of the debate before more information is provided. The right hon. Gentleman was simply putting forward a collection of brief points and was not intending this in a politically argumentative sense, but our gold and dollar reserves are still not as high as they were in 1950. The country would be foolish to go on believing that everything was all right.
We have an unemployment figure which is up by 14,000 compared with June, 1951. That is the real measure of the efforts which we must make to overcome our problem. So far as steel is concerned, I say no more than that the object lesson is there for all to see. We on this side sincerely hope that no action of the Government in recent months has imperilled the progress that has evidently been made in this industry in the past year.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) that in Glasgow and in the industrial areas there has been a little apprehension and unsteadiness as to what the future holds. The increase in the Bank rate and other actions have made industrialists and businessmen hesitate a little. We have to try to induce them to hold steady, because there still linger memories of the 1930's, when private


enterprise was not willing to take risks. As a result, the things that we did between the wars to induce new industries to come to Scotland were tackled in two ways.
First, we tried to get firms with the right techniques and experience. Secondly, we encouraged our own native industrialists by providing all the help that we could to develop the new industries, so as to provide an alternative to our heavy and more stable factories and industries. Therefore, we on this side welcome the new developments, of which the Secretary of State has spoken and to which my right hon. Friend referred, in electronic engineering, aero engines, plastics, radar, television and the expansion of the light engineering and capital goods industries. These require skilled precision and experience. These are things that Scotland has, and I am glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that it will be the Government's intention still further to encourage such developments.
The mere putting up of factories will not cure unemployment. Factories are put up to make goods and, equally important, to sell them at a price which people will pay. These things are obvious, but sometimes need reiteration. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I, together, I believe, with some of the Members opposite, believe, however, that ultimately not only our problems, but the problems of other countries, will be solved only by greater international co-operation and collaboration in raw materials and the like. That is the way out. But if we are to compete, let us compete successfully in that way.
I want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire. All too often do we forget about him and others who were Members of previous Governments and their collaboration with the Scottish Council for Development and Industry in the suggestions that they made four years ago to bring industries to Scotland. They made joint representations to the Ministry of Supply, who, I am glad to see, are represented on the Government Front Bench. It was by those actions that the industries have come up to Scotland. The hope for exports for the whole country lies in the making of goods for which world demand is likely to arise. There is no point in making goods which will accumulate in factories, which only means that ultimately, unemployment will come our way.
The right hon. Gentleman and his Departments today have a definite duty in ensuring that if Scotland is to take full advantage of these developments, which we all welcome, the resources for research and technical education must be made available. The Joint Under-Secretary of State, in the control of education in Scotland, has a big responsibility, because some of the recent developments have not been of a helpful character.
We must think in terms of changed processes of manufacture in order to economise in the use of those raw materials which have to be paid for in dollars. We must cut down the content of those raw materials to achieve stability in our gold and dollar reserves, and by the use of alternatives we can secure a greater share of overseas markets. The engineering and chemical industries in Scotland have a great opportunity and prospects for development. If agriculture is to be developed so that we produce more from the land, there will be a greater demand for chemical fertilisers. In this direction also there is room for further development.
There has been a closer search for minerals since 1946. My right hon. Friend, when in office, appointed the Westwood Committee, which, in 1949, reported on minerals in Scotland. What consideration, if any, has been given to that Report? We can agree that it would be an advantage if from our own resources we could develop raw materials which, while not meeting our own needs, would, nevertheless, make a contribution towards the sum total of the raw materials which the world needs. Have the conclusions of the Report been accepted?
That Committee envisaged a minerals development commission which was, first, to examine the geological evidence and, secondly, to consider the possibilities of applying that knowledge to the question whether the deposits were large enough to stand economic development. The President of the Board of Trade, whom we are pleased to see here today, was a member of the Committee. I hasten to add that I hope the Secretary of State will not be influenced too much by his conclusions because they were contrary to the general findings of the Committee.
The Scottish Council for Industry also asked——

ROYAL ASSENT

Whereupon, The GENTLEMAN USHER OF THE BLACK ROD being come with a Message, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair.

Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.

The House went; and, having returned—

Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1953.
2. Road Transport Lighting Act, 1953.
3. Road Transport Lighting (No. 2) Act, 1953.
4. Accommodation Agencies Act, 1953.
5. Navy and Marines (Wills) Act, 1953.
6. Local Government Superannuation Act, 1953.
7. Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1953.
8. Slaughter of Animals (Pigs) Act, 1953.
9. Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act, 1953.
10. National Insurance Act, 1953.
11. Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation Act, 1953.
12. Army and Air Force (Annual) Act, 1953.
13. Therapeutic Substances (Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1953.
14. Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1953.

15. Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen (Colchester) Charity Scheme Confirmation Act, 1953.
16. Hospital of the Blessed Trinity (Guildford) Charity Scheme Confirmation Act, 1953.
17. Clyde Navigation Order Confirmation Act, 1953.
18. British Transport Commission Order Confirmation Act, 1953.
19. Bradford Corporation (Trolley Vehicles) Order Confirmation Act, 1953.
20. Walsall Corporation (Trolley Vehicles) Order Confirmation Act, 1953.
21. Land Drainage (Surrey County Council (Rive Ditch Improvement)) Provisional Order Confirmation Act, 1953.
22. Great Ouse River Board (Revival of Powers, &c.) Act, 1953.
23. London County Council (Money) Act, 1953.
24. Runcorn—Widnes Bridge Act, 1953.
25. Gateshead Extension Act, 1953.
26. Warkworth Harbour Act, 1953.
27. Dover Harbour Act, 1953.
28. Metropolitan Water Board Act. 1953.
29. Tynemouth Corporation Act, 1953.
30. Huddersfield Corporation Act, 1953.
31. Newport Corporation Act, 1953.
32. Saint Oswald Estate Act, 1953.

And to the following Measure, passed under the provisions of the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919:

Archdeaconries (Augmentation) Measure, 1953.

SUPPLY

Again considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Question again proposed,
That a further sum, not exceeding £105, be granted to Her Majesty, towards defraying the charges for the following services connected with Scottish Industry, Employment and Well-being for the year ending on 31st March, 1954.

SCOTTISH AFFAIRS

5.47 p.m.

Mr. Hannan: Just before that interruption, which was to enable the House to discharge its constitutional duties, I referred to the Westwood Committee, appointed in 1949 to deal with the subject of minerals in Scotland. In addition to that, the Scottish Council for Industry has a committee examining the prospects and deposits of talc, silica, lead and zinc. I should like to know whether there has been any co-ordination between the two reports and what the prospects of development are. All of us will feel that the resources which can be procured by that means, would relieve us of the necessity to go elsewhere to search for them.
I want to draw the attention of the Committee to a very valuable Report which was referred to by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) in the debate last year. It was the Paley report of the United States Materials Commission. Its main purpose is to point out that both for the United States of America and for the industrial nations of Western Europe, the coming years will bring forward a growing problem of shortage of raw materials and that our capacity to produce goods is far outstripping our capacity to produce the raw materials. For example, the report says:
The demand for a non-metallic mineral like fluorspar is typical of why there is a materials problem. Fluorspar used to find its principal use as a flux in steelmaking. As steel production increases, there is more and more demand for fluorspar but, over and above this, modern technology has found additional uses for fluorspar as a source of material for refrigerants, new types of plastics, propellent gases, oil refining reagents, in the production of aluminium, and the fluoridation of water supplies to prevent dental decay.

This report indicates that, as our industrial processes change, so does the demand vary for various minerals and materials. Therefore, if something tangible could be done in this connection if would assist the future of Scotland.
Turning from those general considerations to one nearer my home, may I refer to the stubborn problem of unemployment in Glasgow? My right hon. Friend said that most people have now come to the conclusion that the cure for thickly populated cities like Glasgow is an overspill into surrounding areas. These areas have not yet been defined, but we are all hoping that as a result of the Report of the Clyde Valley Planning Committee, which is due soon, some consideration will be given to it by the Government. Naturally, I cannot ask the Government to accept the recommendations when, at this stage, no one knows what they are, but I can ask that consideration should be speedy and that a decision should be made as quickly as possible.
The real problem is that in the congested areas of Glasgow there are a number of small industries which are not to be under-rated since they constitute a large proportion of the industry of that city. If the overspill of population goes outside some industries will follow, and they will become the responsibility, I assume, of the development corporation in the new area. But what of those industries which have no desire to move out and are left?
As I understand, the idea of the Scottish Council was to have one industrial estate in the north, south, east and west of the city. We have one in the south and there is one proposed in the northwest, which happens to be within my own constituency. I want to ask the President of the Board of Trade what is the position of the Balmore Industrial Estate? I am informed that recently negotiations were about to be completed for the purchase of the land. In view of the likelihood of small industries in the congested area of Glasgow being without workers, will urgent consideration be given to this matter?
This area is practically a new town because, as the right hon. and gallant Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) knows, in Milton and Lambhill 4,000 new houses have been built, with a consequent influx of population. It is a dormitory


area with no large units of heavy industry, but next door, in the neighbouring constituency of Springburn, there are large units of industry entirely dependent on Cowlairs Locomotive Works, the St. Rollox engine works, and the Atlas Contraction Company. Therefore, because of the urgency of this matter, I ask that consideration be given to this development in the north-west.
The percentage of unemployment in Scotland to its insured workers is, at 3 per cent., heavier than in any other region of the country, except Wales. In February of each year, from 1950 to 1953, the percentage of unemployment in Scotland in relation to the United Kingdom was 19, 21·2, 19 and 18 respectively. That is heavy by any standard, but the percentage of Glasgow to Scotland varies between 28 and 30 per cent. In short, Glasgow has one-third of the unemployment of Scotland and something ought to be done to relieve that problem. Even when the overall total was low, as in 1951, when it was 42,000, it represented 31 per cent.
I know that the Ministry of Labour have a sympathetic interest in the disabled persons register, and I want to put one or two considerations to the Parliamentary Secretary. In the Report of the Ministry of Labour for 1951, on page 86 it appears that the total number of disabled on the register has fallen. I accept that. It goes on to say, however, that the number of unemployed on the register has also fallen. On the other hand, it is significant that the number of disabled persons placed during 1951 were 22,800 fewer than in 1950.
Reference to the Scottish Report, paragraph 20, page 10, indicates that in December, 1952, the increase in the number of unemployed disabled persons was 10,018 more than in 1951. A figure of 8,800 unemployed is also mentioned. That represents 10 per cent. of the total, but the disabled unemployed related to the total number of unemployed in Scotland is 12 per cent. My point is that there is a hard core of disabled persons on our unemployed registers in Scotland, particularly in Glasgow, and if we can break it we shall bring the number of unemployed in Scotland more into relationship with the rest of the country.
While I may not have developed sufficient facts to prove my case, I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary appreciates the point I am trying to make, that he will look at it and that the Department will ask themselves whether they could not consider increasing the quota. Last year, consideration was given to whether that ratio should be increased to 4 per cent. On balance, the Administration thought it was better to leave it as it was, because many employers were taking more than their ratio at the moment. All credit to them.
Government Departments should get some credit, for they are taking more than their share. They are actually employing 5·6 per cent. Government training centres serve a good purpose. We have only two. One in Granton has been closed and I should like to know why. The resources have been transferred to Hillington. Perhaps Remploy offers, the best opportunity for dealing with this problem. I note from the Ministry of Labour Report that five new Remploy factories were built in 1951, but that not one was built in Scotland. Yet there have been representations by all the local disabled persons committees in the areas. They have pleaded with the Ministry for action, and especially for a tuberculosis employ factory in Glasgow.
The Remploy people have two sites in Glasgow. They are ready to go ahead if they can get sanction. I note in our own Report that restrictions have been lifted on factory building where the conditions merit that action. I hope that the Committee will agree that if we are to break the back of the problem more Remploy factories must be built. It is true that there have been two extensions at Motherwell and Stirling, the one at Motherwell having been recently completed.
After the recent debate which we had on the Health Estimates the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland was good enough to send me a copy of the Second Report of the Advisory Council on Handicapped Persons. That points out that under Section 29 (4, c) of the National Assistance Act, power is given to local authorities to provide special workshops for handicapped people. The Report deals especially with spastic and epileptic cases. I will not trouble the Committee with quotations from it. It is


sufficient to say that it points out that out of 1,800 known epileptics in Scotland only 1,285 are on the disabled persons register. Nearly 500 are unknown, and of the 1,285 who are registered 250 are unemployed. The Report suggests that local authorities should be asked to provide special workshops under the powers given to them by the Act.
I wish to say a few words about the development of the Forestry Commission. This is one of the great hopes for Scotland. If we can encourage the Commission to go ahead in building associated industries such as cellulose, wood treatment, sawmills and the rest, that will go a long way to augment the possibility enunciated by the Secretary of State today.
I had the great privilege recently to visit another small country with a similar population—Finland. As the Committee know, it is white coal that they use. Their product is timber. It seemed to me, in visiting some of the places and seeing the homely, friendly communities which are developing in isolated areas, with beautiful homes being built of the timber which they fell, that there was a great example which we should do well to follow. I realise, of course, that there are many things which we contribute to the happiness of the world.
My remarks have been mainly devoted to Scotland's well-being. It is a well-being which cannot be measured in a balance sheet. It will be measured in the happiness and health of our people. We should provide more opportunity for the handicapped and the disabled to participate in community life. It is not always an uneconomic proposition. I am told by employer friends that many who suffer disabilities are, in fact, better workers than some who have all their faculties. The provision of employment adds dignity and gives them an opportunity to develop their self-respect. They have a feeling that they are wanted and needed.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) said on the Second Reading of the National Insurance Bill—and here I paraphrase—it is not security that rots the fibre of men and women; it is insecurity. By building up these industries and providing these opportunities we shall help to contribute to the making of a better Scotland and a better people.

6.6 p.m.

Mr. J. N. Browne: I am sure that both sides of the Committee join with me in thanking the hon. Member for Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) not only for his constructive speech but for the spirit behind his words. We are all trying to help Scotland. We all have a contribution to make. It is without apology that each of us will have to deal with those points which are of special interest to us as individuals. I want to start by talking about shipbuilding, and to get the facts in perspective I wish to quote a few figures.
In 1952 Britain had a record order book. We had over 7 million tons of shipping on the order book. Today we have 6,250,000 tons on the order book. In 1952 the completions in Britain represented 35 per cent. of world completions; but after the war the completions in Britain represented 50 per cent. The British shipping picture is that, while we are breaking records on the one hand, we are losing a proportion of world trade. Scotland has about 40 per cent. of the British proportion, so shipbuilding is a most important industry and we must examine its future.
I must draw the attention of the Committee to one or two Government pronouncements on this subject. On 26th of June an adjournment debate was initiated in this House by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. F. Willey). In reply to the debate my hon. Friend the Civil Lord of the Admiralty said:
I assure the House that the industry is in a very prosperous state. It is extremely satisfactory to have four years of orders on the books.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, North had been worried about the future of shipbuilding, and that was the reply that he received Again, in a publication issued by the Treasury, called the "Bulletin for Industry, No. 52," we have this statement:
In mid-1952 a decline in orders for ships set in, but this was to be expected after the heavy influx of orders in 1951 and early 1952, which broadly booked up capacity for several years ahead.
In the interests of the industry, this Committee should examine this "four years ahead" and this "broadly speaking booked up to capacity." My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland spoke with greater accuracy of three years ahead.
I draw the attention of the Committee to my last quotation which is from another remark made by the Civil Lord of the Admiralty in the same debate to which I have already referred when he said:
I am sure that the House will be glad to have noted that the President of the Shipbuilding Conference, Mr. Connell, has been appointed to the new Iron and Steel Board, so that the views of quite an experienced shipbuilder will be available there."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th June, 1953; Vol. 516, c. 2337–9.]
What were the views of this quite experienced shipbuilder? He wrote an article on Monday, 6th July, in the "Financial Times" in which he said:
The tanker building firms have work on hand for two, three and in some cases four years ahead; but many builders of other types of vessels—the smaller types of cargo vessels and tankers, coasters, tugs, trawlers, dredgers and barges—are not booked so far ahead. …
I have made a personal examination into the position of shipbuilding orders in Scotland, and I find that what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said is substantially correct, and that what Mr. Connell said is also correct. Those of us who represent Govan and Tradeston and places like that, where there are the big yards, have no need to worry, because the large firms have plenty of orders on hand, but that is not the case with the smaller yards, some of which have very little work in hand beyond 1954.

Mr. Rankin: The hon. Member mentions the fact that some of the smaller yards have no orders on hand beyond 1954. Can he indicate the names of some of these smaller yards?

Mr. Browne: Yes, here they are. Ardrossan, Greenock, March, 1954; Port Glasgow, nothing after December, 1954; three yards in Renfrew, the latest orders go up to June, 1954; two in Aberdeen, and one in Bowling, March, 1954; Inglis of Pointhouse, according to my information, nothing after 1953.

Mr. Rankin: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that information. Will he use his position with his Government to see that they face up very seriously to that grave state of affairs?

Mr. Browne: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity of

saying that nothing that I say this afternoon has anything to do with my position with the Government.
I was referring to the smaller yards, and I think that the English smaller yards will also be in much the same position. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that a Government publication should give a wrong impression, and, while I have no desire to embarrass the Government, I must say that foreign yards are quick to act on the impression that we cannot take work in this country. We must make it quite clear and send out the message from this House that we are ready to take orders and to fulfil them in a proper workmanlike manner.
The second point that I want to raise concerning shipbuilding is about steel. The output of the shipbuilding industry has been affected all along by the shortage of steel, and that shortage is not yet cured. We have got the berths and the manpower, but what has been the effect of the shortage of steel, especially in the smaller yards? It has been, of course, that they have been slowed down to walking pace, and, if we can get more steel, the speed of output will increase. We can then get more goodwill, more orders, cheaper prices and better deliveries. This is a very competitive trade. Not only do foreigners buy from us, but we also buy from foreigners. As an example, the Shoreham Harbour Trust, in association with the British Electricity Authority, recently accepted a Dutch tender at a substantially lower price and with better delivery dates than could be given in this country, so that we must not think that this is a one way trade for the Scottish shipbuilding industry.
I have mentioned costs, and lower costs are very necessary indeed, because shipowners are beginning to look with apprehension at the level of shipbuilding costs. They are hesitating about placing further orders, and, what is more serious, are hesitating about proceeding with the contemplated orders which have already been given. The Government—and I praise them for taking the right action—scrapped the old allocation scheme which led to stock-piling, and formed the new voluntary steel plate scheme, which must be made a reality. The steel-makers must take a long view, and keep shipbuilding in the forefront of British industry.
I do not want to bring any party politics into this, but it would not be right to mention shipbuilding without raising one little party point. I do not think that the Labour Party realised that the shipbuilding industry, which is basic to this country and a highly competitive industry as well, would suffer seriously by being flung into the cockpit of party politics. I am sorry that, in their "Challenge to Britain," the Labour Party are proposing to impose a Development Council on the industry when it does not want it, and I think that every side of the industry will agree with that view. One can say that we have full employment, but we cannot continue full employment by means of wishful thinking, and, if we are to maintain that full employment, it will only be done by speedy, economical and efficient production.
Now, I want to raise another point, and say something that I have been wanting to say for a very long time. I am not going to talk about shipbuilding, nor even about the sea, but rather about the fish that swim in the sea, and, in particular, about white fish, Scotland's pride. Fish in Scotland is as good in its class as the very best Scotch whisky, and I make no apology for talking about white fish. We do not catch any fish in Govan, but it is a constituency in which much fish is eaten. I challenge any country in the world to say that the best white fish is not obtained in Britain, and I challenge anybody in Britain to say that the best white fish in Britain is not caught in Scotland. We do not realise in this country how fortunate we are in the fish we have.
I remember having lunch with a nice family in Chicago, and I asked what sort of fish was served. The reply was, "Just fish." I went to the fishmonger, and he also said it was "just fish." When I was in Buenos Aires, what was the most expensive item on the menu? It was smoked haddock, about which we say to our wives, "Oh, not that again." When I was in Cyprus, I passionately desired fish, and all I got were little bits of octopus. We are fortunate in the flavour and quality of the fish, which makes Scotland a gourmet's paradise, a piscatorial paradise for those who enjoy white fish.
There is one interesting point about white fish, and it is that the tastes of the

last generation have altered. We used to eat fish on the bone, and now we eat it filleted.

Colonel Alan Gomme-Duncan: Shame.

Mr. Browne: My hon. and gallant Friend says "Shame." But he is quite wrong; it is a very good tendency indeed to eat filleted fish. It helps the filleting at the docks, and that saves transport and makes the fish cheaper, and it also concentrates all the by-products in one place.
Several hon. Members opposite, including the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), have made complaints about the difference in price of fish at the port and on the table, but what they do not seem to realise is the difference in quantity between the port and the table. They do not realise that the loss of weight in the filleting of fish, in Scotland, can be as much as two-thirds, and the normal for filleting fish at the port, on the average, is that 2½ lb. of fish at the port means only 1 lb. on the table. The housewife is doing a service by demanding filleted fish, and she need not be worried about whether she is paying the right price for it. Fish is indeed an excellent food, and I congratulate the Scottish housewife on appreciating what a good meal a nice piece of boiled cod can provide for a hungry man who does not want to put on too much weight.
Now about whiting, which is a most plentiful fish of most delicate flavour, half the price of lemon sole; what a lot of people say: "It's only good enough for the cat."

Mrs. Alice Cullen: What about herring, the best fish of the lot?

Mr. Browne: I am talking about whiting. Hon. Ladies who are housewives will confirm that many housewives do not know the difference between whiting and haddock. They might be buying whiting when they think they are buying haddock. I remember the way my granny used to cook whiting, with the tail put through the eyes. When it is baked you just cut it round the top edge and all the white fish just falls away. There is no finer way of eating it. If hon. Members want to have it like this, they have only to go to their fish


mongers and ask for it skinned and turned, and they will get it that way.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Did granny have her fish filleted?

Mr. Browne: No, my granny did not want the fish filleted. Perhaps the taste is better if it is not filleted. The flavour of the fish is improved.
I want to raise one final point. It is another bee that I am afraid is buzzing about my bonnet. If I am to get any criticism, let me say right away that this is a very narrow point concerning the direction of industry to remoter areas like Buckie and Peterhead. What is the problem? Direction, as my right hon. Friend says, is not to be considered; inducement has so far not been successful. The right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) referred to "the vague power of inducement." That a right term. We have to find a formula that will make it worth while for some firms to go to places like Buckie. We want sound and small firms, and firms that will stay in business and will not compete with agriculture and local industry.
What is the solution going to be like if we can find it? It will have to be of very limited scope and it may not be applicable to all areas. Consequently, there will have to be some feather bedding if we are to make it worth while for firms to go to places like Buckie. What will it cost the taxpayer to create employment for one man? My right hon. Friend will tell me if I am right or wrong, but I would say the cost would be £500 or £600 to create employment anywhere in Scotland for one man and for places like Buckie and Peterhead even up to £1,000. This matter has exercised my mind. The Government have made offers to industry which have had no success. Strictly as a private enterprise, I went to consult private industry. I did not say, "This is what we are going to do to attract you." I said, "Tell me what are the terms which would attract you to go to Buckie? In other words, on what terms would you go? Would you go on any terms at all."
I trust that my colleagues will not accuse me of being a visionary or a mug. I asked the question, and I got an

answer, from a firm that has been in business for more than 100 years and makes a readily marketable commodity, the carriage on which from Buckie/Peterhead would not be more than 1 per cent. of the selling price. This firm offered to start a factory in the Buckie/Peterhead area to employ 65 men, and they ask three conditions. First of all, they want the factory not only to be built but to be equipped with plant and machinery. Secondly, they want to pay a rental which would allow them to trade at a profit. Thirdly, they want some arrangement by which they could acquire the plant and machinery after a period. What we have to examine today is whether it is possible to make any suggestion which will attract industry to those areas. As I said, I am neither a mug nor a visionary, and I am trying to be factual, even though it is not successful. Can anything be done on the lines I have suggested?
It is up to the Scottish Office or the Board of Trade to say whether they have the power and the facilities to provide the machinery as well as the factory. It may or may not be possible. If they have those powers, the rest is a matter of negotiation. Is it beyond the wit of man to strike a fair deal between the taxpayer and the industrialist who is proposing to go up there? It has to be a deal fair to the taxpayer and attractive to the industrialist. What is the cost of unemployment to the taxpayer? We must remember that very soon now the taxpayer will be paying money into the National Insurance Fund which will be running at a loss owing to the increased cost of retirement pensions.
It is right to ask the cost of an unemployed man to the taxpayer, not in terms of heartbreak but in terms of hard cash. I say that the cost to the taxpayer of 50 men in terms of hard cash is about £8,750 a year. Here we have the facts. The taxpayer might, if he can employ 60 people, have to spend something like £60,000 and save what might otherwise be an inevitable expenditure of £8,000 or £9,000 of the taxpayers' money in unemployment benefit.
I ask the Ministers concerned to look at this proposal sympathetically. If we can achieve direction by inducement we must be prepared to pay for it. If it means nothing more than the supply of machinery on some reasonable terms,


surely empty factories and idle hands are worth more than that. I would rather pay for machinery than have echoing walls and factories with nothing in them.
When all is said and done, we are all going to make our little contributions to improve the welfare of Scotland. This debate is a challenge. The right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire said that it was better for the Scottish people to develop their own enterprise. I could not agree with him more. Governments in the past, and the present Government, have helped and will help the development of Scotland, but in the end it is up to the Scottish people. There is no need for us to rely on the Sassenach firms Since 1937, firms coming into Scotland have created employment for only 2½ per cent. of those in employment. In the end, the continued development of industry and the further employment of our people will depend upon Scotland and the brains and skill of the Scottish people.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. A. Balfour: Thank you, Sir Charles, for giving me this first opportunity after eight years to take part in a debate. It is not the first time I have made an attempt to get in, but I have always found it was so difficult that it was hardly worth while. People get up here from time to time and keep us here for hours on end, and I have said, "What's the use of inflicting another torture upon the House?" Because of that I have never taken the opportunity, except on this occasion, to take part in a debate.
I am tempted to accept the invitation the hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Browne) was extending to us. I did not know whether he was offering us a fish and chip supper washed down with whisky. I have come to the conclusion that he was only codding. That being so, I will turn to the point which I have risen to make. Otherwise I would not have spoken. My father taught me to hold my tongue. He used to say, "Keep in your place and don't you talk when anybody else is talking. Don't mimic others when they are speaking. Before you speak listen to others, and you may find it's not worth saying it at all."
We are having an important debate today. Rather, I would say that it is not a debate but a confession of faith. It is a confession or admission of failure

on both sides. I am not condemning either side for that, because we are never a failure if we keep on trying honestly, with the intention of solving the problems which we come here to try to solve.
These debates serve the good purpose of bringing us back to the realisation of the functions which we are supposed to fulfil in this House. We are not getting far towards solving these problems, but there must be solutions to them. Today we are discussing industry, employment and well-being, and what a scope they provide for talk and for thought and what an opportunity for work. All that we need to solve these problems are those three words, because without industry there is no employment or there is underemployment, and without employment no well-being. These are the things which politicians set themselves out to provide. They try to reconcile these needs in order to serve the interests of mankind as a whole.
How far have we got with them? I thought that the speech of the Secretary of State for Scotland today was far too optimistic. He may have been optimistic with the best intentions in the world, but I think that he was wrong. We must go much deeper in trying to solve these problems than merely increasing imports or exports. That does not take us very far. We must solve the problem of rising unemployment and the rising cost of living. But instead of making progress in those fields we are retrogressing and, so long as that is the position, it is the measure of our failure.
The wealth of the nation, and I am repeating what was said by the great Scotsman, Adam Smith, depends on the proper utilisation of the national resources and the full application of the manual and mental energy of the people on useful work. Not on useless toil. Our problem is to bring that about. A nation measures its wealth not in jewellery and in finery but in the numbers of its well-fed and happy people. To the extent that they are happy and contented, to that extent we could use the energy and the industry of the country.
Where there is poverty, hunger and want and the dread of poverty through unemployment we shall never get that mental and manual power applied to industry to use the resources at our disposal in


order to solve our problems. To do that we must never neglect the mental pabulum that is required. Food alone is not all that mankind needs. Intellectual development is more important in the age in which we live than porridge or milk, and in our complex environment a thorough education is more and more necessary for the child.
I am trying to put before the Committee the problems which we have set ourselves to solve. Having regard to what has been said and done I am a little apprehensive whether the Government are taking the right course in the economic interest of the nation. We talk a great deal about the development of the Highlands, which is a worthy subject. After the Duke of Sutherland cleared the people out we are trying to bring them back again. I do not want to bring in a controversial matter. I am merely trying to show that we were not responsible for what was done there.
We hear about the new towns, but we do not hear enough about the old towns that are becoming derelict. What is the use of building a new town to take the over-spill from Glasgow when derelict towns in West Stirlingshire are producing unemployed who fill up the places in Glasgow which the people of the new town have made vacant? Is that sensible? The Committee may like to know the position in West Stirlingshire, which is manly dependent on coalmining. The source of people's livelihood round Kilsyth will have gone in the course of 10 years as the mines are worked out. The same applies to other places from Kilsyth to Bannockburn where the battle was fought. Another battle will be fought there shortly unless we make some provision for the people of Bannockburn to live.
I have been concerned with this problem for the eight years that I have been a Member for West Stirlingshire. I am concerned about what will happen in the next 10 years. We Socialists were accused of driving families away from home, but that is what is happening in that area now. Kilsyth has a population of 10,000. The population of the adjoining villages of Banknock, Banton, Twechar, and Queenzieburn make, with that of Kilsyth, a total of 16,200. Out of Kilsyth and those villages 1,050 people

travel daily to work. A total of 750 go to Glasgow, 125 to Kirkintilloch, 180 to Bonnybridge, Falkirk and Coatbridge and the surrounding area.
That is a waste of time and a waste of transport and a waste of people's earnings because they have to pay for that transport. It is an economic madhouse and we are tilting at windmills in building new towns. What is the purpose of building the new towns? Kilsyth Town Council own 1,600 houses, but in 10 years' time there will be no use for those houses because the people will become nomads and will leave for the big towns. There is at the moment still a great need for houses there because out of a total of 2,790 houses in the burgh 590 are below modern standards. But can the town afford to build any more? Is there any incentive or encouragement to build any more when in 10 years the property may become valueless?
We must solve the problems which I have enumerated. My intention has been to try to direct the attention of the Secretary of State to the need not to forget the old towns which have established communities and an established social life. They are five or 10 miles apart and the establishment of a little industry in between them would unite them and make a bigger community. That only wants a bit of imagination. We must stop the people from going into Glasgow. That is too big to be a healthy environment. Towns, like human beings, can be too big.
We must try to do something for these historical villages, such as Lennoxtown—which used to be a thriving little town before the great industrial revolutions destroyed it—and Kilsyth. All these little villages were a source of wealth, but in 10 years' time they will be despised, cast aside, unwanted. That will be a loss to Scotland and to Britain, because no country can thrive if it has people who are unemployed. Every man and woman who is unemployed, not fulfilling some useful function in society, is a measure of the poverty of a country.
We are drifting, and we must continue to drift unless we realise how much we depend on outside sources. This nation has the potentialities, the mentality and the guts to win through, given the necessary


backing, but we must work as a team—all for the people, not for the individual. That may be Socialism, but it is also Christianity.
I could carry on indefinitely, but I do not want to be provocative, this being my maiden speech. The next time I speak I hope to say something objective. I have many things to talk about. Looking at the subjects we are discussing—industry, employment and well-being—what a scope for philosophy they provide; what an opportunity for an economist. What a glorious triumph it would be to solve the problem of those three words. That is our job; do not let us play about with it. There are fish and chips with whisky outside, whenever the Committee are ready.

6.43 p.m.

Colonel Alan Gomme-Duncan: It is not very often that one has the privilege and pleasure of congratulating a maiden speaker after he has spent eight years in the House. That does not make it any less a pleasure; it makes it even more a pleasure than it would have been. When I realise that the hon. Member for Stirlingshire, West (Mr. Balfour) came into the House at the same time as I did, and think of all the times I have inflicted upon the House speeches which were good, bad and indifferent—mainly the last two—it makes one reflect. We should congratulate him most sincerely. He spoke with the obvious sincerity of a man who knows what he is talking about. We can promise him plently of interjections next time, if he wants them. My hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. J. N. Browne) will very gladly give him the fish and chips, and if he will come to that great source of whisky—Perth—I shall be happy to add the whisky. I congratulate the hon. Member very sincerely, and we all hope to hear from him again in the future.
I hope I shall be in order in the few remarks I want to make. They are on a broad basis, but they definitely deal with the subjects under discussion—Scottish industry, employment and well-being. I am convinced that there are certain things which are very wrong in the set-up of our country today. There is a lack of balance between town and country. When I refer to industry, I am not referring to agriculture—which is the greatest of all industries,

because all other industries depend on it—but to that kind of industry which I might describe as the transforming, by processing in factories, of raw materials into manufactured goods.
If I refer to my notes more frequently than usual, I hope I shall be forgiven. The subject is somewhat complicated, and I am not good at carrying facts and figures in my head. I want to make it clear that many of the points I shall raise are probably capable of being shot down in flames by people who know more about them than I do, but they are suggestions which I hope may be worthy of consideration in connection with the problem of Scotland's future.
It is obvious that industry, in the terms in which I have described it, is the magnet which is drawing people away from the rural areas and into the towns. On the other hand—and this is not so readily appreciated—it is industry which is swelling considerably the already overcrowded and congested cities and the large urban areas. The country is rapidly becoming ill-balanced, even if we cannot say that it is definitely ill-balanced at the moment.
On the one hand, we have the big rural counties, which are finding it immensely difficult to provide the services which our modern standard of life requires over the widely scattered areas, with small populations, with which they have to contend. On the other hand, the cities are finding it increasingly difficult, financially and otherwise, to rebuild and to house the ever-increasing population which is coming to them, and to keep those services going which we believe our people should have.
Owing to the restricted area of Britain, and the fact that it has a population which is far greater than we can support, we must import very nearly half our food and the vast majority of our raw materials. They can be paid for only by exporting manufactured goods. That may sound like a platitude, but I often wonder whether it is sufficiently realised that whereas, in days gone by, there were huge agricultural areas in other countries, and those countries were delighted to take our manufactured goods in exchange for the food and raw materials we wanted, nowadays, through modern developments, in which we have taken a leading part, and through our having exported to those countries large amounts of machinery and


plant, they are now making those very things upon the export of which we depended for our food and raw materials in the past.
Whether we like it or not, that is the hard fact from which we cannot get away, and it is vitally important that everyone should realise that only by exporting can we live. If we do not export we cannot possibly continue as a great or even a small country. I have no doubt that we have 25 million people too many, but they are there, and we have to face up to the problem, which is becoming greater every single day.
Our first aim must be to produce more food from our very restricted land. The land of Scotland is not used to anything like its fullest extent in the production of food. We must also get ever-increasing industrial efficiency in factories and workshops. I often wonder whether industry which, I am assured, is so efficient within the factory, ever considers how efficient it is outside. With all the smooth running of a modern factory, do the people concerned really work out carefully what is happening outside the factory, in relation to the industry with which it is concerned? Do they ever consider how the raw materials get to the factory and how the manufactured goods get away from it, or how the workers get to and from the factory—and all those other factors?
Is the outside as efficient as the inside? I do not think it is. I believe that here we can help very much to improve the condition of Scottish industry today. It is another truism to say that we must induce people to leave congested areas and to go into the rural areas so as to build up the economies of the counties, the small burghs and the larger villages. To induce people to leave the overcrowded congested cities is easy on paper but not so easy in fact, and I think we have to do it without requiring the costly and artificial and, to my mind, crazy idea of building new towns—and here I agree with the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire. I think these new towns will lead to trouble in the end and I very much regret that we are continuing the policy.
The new crafts, trades and professions which arose out of the industrial revolution, which in my humble opinion was in some ways the greatest disaster which has

hit the human race in the whole of its history, demanded standardisation and, in its turn, standardisation demanded mass production; and that is very largely based on what I may term the conveyor belt principle, materials being carried from worker to worker, or group of workers to group of workers, eventually turning out as the completed article.
No one can deny that the system has worked well and that the great wealth of this country has been built by these developments, but the system has led to large plants covering even acres of ground where hundreds of workers are employed under one roof. As I understand—and I am open to criticism here—when the industrialist considers it essential to step up production he thinks in terms of streamlining even further this system of production in his factory. If new premises are required, I imagine that he visualises the space, the area, which will be required for the new streamlining process, and his factory extension is designed on those lines.
I believe that it is this conception of the large multi-process factory, involving, as it does, heavy expenditure and requiring land which is ever more valuable today, requiring buildings and machinery, which is the chief factor working against the true distribution of industry. If the industrialist thinks about this I think he will agree. It is causing the towns, where these big factories and extensions are built, to continue a wasteful form of development, even if the development is on an orderly basis.
Looking at the country as a whole, can we say that materials flow smoothly into the factories in the same way that they flow smoothly around the factories? Are not too many hours devoted to transporting goods up and down, across and along and through congested bottlenecks—and I apologise to my hon. and learned Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade for the use of the word "bottleneck," to which I know he objects. Is it efficient to have public buses and staff kept waiting so that they may be available in the peak period when the workers come out of the factories?
Is it efficient to take cattle from the Highlands of Scotland on the hoof, hundreds of miles south, instead of taking meat products south? Is it efficient to


carry tree trunks from the Highlands of Scotland to some factory in the south where they will be turned into pulp and other things made from wood? Is it efficient to carry out one or two processes of the aluminium industry in Fife and then to take the result of them across to Fort William, and then to take the result of that down to Coventry where it is turned into gear boxes, pots and pans and other excellent things?
Is that really efficiency? As an outsider, I ask myself, is it efficient to take all the materials required for ice-cream, which seems to be a large proportion of the nation's diet in these modern times, from all over the countryside down to London, where ice-cream is manufactured and then send it to Inverness to be sold? Is that efficiency? It may be efficient for the men doing it, but from the point of view of the country's economy and of spreading industry throughout the country, I very much doubt whether it is.
Those are only a few examples. I believe that the same principles which the industrialist applies inside his factory ought, with adaptations suitable to the problem, to be applied very largely outside the factory. I want to make one or two practical proposals—at least, I hope they are practical proposals, but, as I said at the beginning, I am not an industrialist and I am open to be shot down by anybody with greater knowledge. Nevertheless, we must not always assume that those with the greatest knowledge are necessarily those most susceptible to change, and I think that is perhaps where the humble outsider can make a contribution.
I wonder whether it would not be feasible to consider the country as a whole. If we look at the map and see, North to South, the great main road and railway system, could we not look upon this as if it were a conveyor belt for the country, so that when materials leave Scotland, in the form of raw materials of some kind or another—it may be meat, or milk or eggs or——

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Whisky.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Whisky is in a line by itself. What I was saying was that along these roads lie cities, towns and villages, four or eight or ten or twelve miles

apart, and surely each could be doing something on the lines of the wartime shadow factory production—making components. Is it not possible that down this line between Inverness and London or the Midlands certain parts of the finished product could be made en route? The container which brought the materials in could go out again with the completed components, which would be passed on to the next process. Work could be done by small factories employing 20 to 40 or possibly 100 people, but no more, in existing villages or towns along the route, where transport could move freely.
Is this impossible? It seems to me that it is worth examining, because we should have the conveyor belt conveying goods along the route, being manufactured and added to as they went along, instead of the present system of transporting raw materials to distant places, creating the tremendous road and rail problem which we face at present. I do not think my suggestion is impossible. The aluminium gear boxes and crank cases begun in Fort William could flow South in various stages of manufacture to Conventry there to become the completed machines. The aluminium has no greater distance to travel but the amount of transport and labour needed is surely very much reduced.
I maintain that meat—fresh, chilled or canned—and leather, adhesives, glue, bone meal, and not cattle, should be on the move if we are to use to the best possible advantage the transport system of our country and the materials which are available. Then, of course, the cakes and jam and ice cream which feed London could perfectly well be made en route, very largely where the food is grown.
I realise that this solution is immediately met by experts telling me that I do not understand the huge additional expense of divided management. During the war, one of the greatest successes in producing our armaments was the system of small factories which made small components all over the countryside. They were very efficient and they worked well. I do not believe that method should be confined entirely to wartime.
I do not think it is possible that the mineral and other resources of the land in the North of Scotland can be economically


developed if it means costly, longdistance transport, hauling such things as crude rock, tree trunks and even meat. I do not think that is possible. I ask my hon. Friend in his reply whether some consideration can be given to what I have very simply and rather amateurishly tried to describe as making a conveyor belt system work as effectively and smoothly outside the factory as it works inside the factory.
In conclusion I should like to say, as I started by saying, that I believe our country is faced with and will face an enormous problem in this matter of our population, and that it is essential that not one acre more of good agricultural land should be taken for any other purpose than food production, otherwise disaster is inevitable. I was horrified to read in the report of a debate in another place last week the remark of one noble Lord, speaking for the Government, I rather think, though I may be wrong, who said that we must get used to the fact that within the next so many years, 20 or 25, I think, another 2 million acres of agricultural land will be taken for other purposes. If that is so, disaster is certain. I cannot say that to the Committee with too great emphasis, and I do hope that some redistribution and change in the methods of industry that I have endeavoured to put forward may contribute towards a solution of the problems of the land and of our industry in Scotland.

7.1 p.m.

Mr. David J. Pryde: I was very pleased indeed to hear the Secretary of State tell us that the President of the Board of Trade and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour would take part in this debate. I fear, however, that not only will the Secretary of State require their co-operation, but also the co-operation of the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Works and the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself if the problems of Scotland are to be tackled, as they should be tackled, efficiently and to some purpose. I think my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Balfour) is perfectly correct in what he says about the decanting of our people from our big cities

into the rural areas, and that the places in the cities are filled again by the people from the rural areas.
I have read several reports about the problem of Scotland, Cmd. 8797 on Industry and Employment in Scotland in 1952, and also the Mears Report. I find that there is a general tendency nowadays to forget the great work which was performed by Sir Frank Mears. I do not want to bore the Committee with statistics, but we find from these Reports that we have a population of 5,114,000 in Scotland, of whom 2,352,000 are the working population, and we have a very dangerous factor in this, that nearly half a million, 427,000 people, in Scotland are over 65 years of age, so that we have an ageing population. I fear very much that if there were 25 million less in these Islands we should be back again in our country with a standard of living of the painted people. There was a great deal in what the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) said about the concentration of industry and its organisation, and I am certain we want some development along the line he suggested.
I was pleased to learn that the President of the Board of Trade will visit Scotland next month, and I hope that when he does he will pay attention to one report which is invaluable in studying the position of Scotland. I refer to "The Social and Economic Problems of the Scottish Border Counties," and I am going to speak now of the forgotten lands with which it deals. Cmd. 8797 surveys only part of Scotland, that part West of Grangemouth with one desultory incursion into Edinburgh, with a mention of Ferranti's, to which I shall refer again, and to a colliery in a certain glen in Midlothian which does not exist.
There was no such thing in this world as Bilston Glen. The colliery is named as being in Bilston Glen. That name surely originated out of the spirals of tobacco smoke in a back room of the National Coal Board's offices on a summer afternoon, because there certainly is a burn called Bilston Burn which wimples through a glen, but it is not Bilston Glen, but Dryden, the seat of General Sir Simon Lockhart of the Lee. We have little in the Report about the East of Scotland. There is one


mention of a water scheme in Edinburgh, Fruid-Menzion, but Edinburgh was always futurist in relation to its water affairs, and that does not employ a large number of men.
Our task today is to examine the East of Scotland as we find it, because we know perfectly well that private enterprise in the coalfield in Scotland left us many uneconomic collieries, and it has been necessary to shut down something like 44 collieries since vesting day. I am not going to develop the coal position on this occasion. I hope to do it on a more appropriate occasion, but let me remind the Committee that four collieries were shut down in Lanarkshire last year, and the men had to be transferred. We cannot transfer them to Midlothian any more because the Government's policy in finance has prevented the local authorities from embarking on that policy of housebuilding which they had intended to do. True, we are building in Midlothian a new town without the assistance of the Government, but the Government's financial policy is really impeding us. We certainly need the assistance of the Minister of Transport in regard to roads.
I would draw the attention of the Committee to the Report, "The Social and Economic Problems of the Border Counties," because this Report not only portrays all the difficulties in the rural parts of South-East Scotland but also gives the cure. It tells the Government what they should do and what they cannot do. For instance, we in Midlothian have no alternative industries to employ the womenfolk being transferred from Lanarkshire along with the men. It is perfectly true to say that a year ago we were faced with unemployment in the carpet industry, the tweed industry and our paper industry. While the tweed industry in Peebles-shire and the carpet industry in Midlothian has picked up, after, of course, an intervention by our Board of Trade with the Colonies, the paper industry has not recovered, and we do need the introduction of new industries, especially in the western portion of the constituency, to correct the unbalance which at present exists.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire gave another illustration of wasted effort in transport in West Lothian, and 19 buses leave a little

village before 9 o'clock in the morning, taking people all over the country to earn their bread and butter, with consequent cost to us of the transport.
It is perfectly true to say that Ferranti, Ltd., did intend utilising this reservoir of labour which they knew existed in the area, and it is also true to say that the Board of Trade did not direct them, or the Ministry of Labour either. It is also true that Ferranti's were not granted licences to build. They were frozen out of Midlothian and they were told that a factory existed in Dundee which was ready for occupation.
We built, from 1945, 1,016 new factories in Scotland. That was one of them. I was glad to hear an hon. Member say that new factories were not just the solution to the unemployment problem. The unemployment problem is still a sore point. We have some 57,000 unemployed in Scotland, and in July, 1948, we had 48,300, representing 2·5 of the working population. On 14th July, 1952, we had 68,500, or 3·2 per cent. of the working population unemployed. So long as there is that amount of unemployment in Scotland, we are going to have a thorny problem, because our people are congested as between the Forth and the Clyde. It is true to say that something like three-fifths of our population in Scotland is in the Clyde Valley.
I think that not enough attention has been paid to South-East Scotland. In their first Report on South-East Scotland, the Electricity Board made clear that this was the last area to introduce electricity supplies to its rural areas. That Board has performed wonders, but it is not receiving sufficient money in order to undertake its obligations, although it is doing its best. The supply of electricity to our rural areas, especially in South-East Scotland, would indeed be a great boon. With one-twentyfifth of our people in the Forces, it seriously depletes our labour power.
In the Tweed Valley we are dependent on the well-being of one industry alone. It is true to say that there is a spirit of adventure among some of our young manufacturers. Often I have heard it said that the Scots have no initiative. Often I have read that from the pens of English columnists. In the Tweed Valley we have young men who have branched off from the parent organisation, tweed


weaving, and have commenced to adventure in a new industry, hosiery and knitwear, and today they are making a splendid contribution to our export trade.
The schedule for the new Development Areas is calamitous indeed, because unemployment is worse in those areas than in the old areas. What is the good of coming to Westminster and putting on the Statute Book the Distribution of Industries Act if it is blinked at and no attention paid to it. I suggest to the President of the Board of Trade that he should take note of the fact that two parishes in Midlothian are scheduled under the Act, and that he should at least do something to get industry to that particular area.
The Government policy of the day is absolutely opposed to the policy as recommended by the Committee which gave us the Report on the Social and Economic Problems of the Border Counties. In dealing with forestry, this Committee tells the Government that the school at Glentress should be used to reforest the very high altitudes in the county of Peebles and in the Tweed Valley. What do we find? The Government are moving the Glentress Forestry School away to Perthshire, thereby militating against our chances of employment. This Committee tells the Government what industries they could set up in the Tweed Valley to act as balance against the solitary tweed industry upon which the majority of the people are dependent. It also tells us what industries could be introduced into Midlothian. Only on one point do I disagree with the Committee.
The Committee recommend that paper-making should be introduced into the town of Peebles. I deprecate that. If there is one factor which will ruin a river it is the introducing of the paper-making industry. With the lack of vigilance shown by the Government in regard to the enforcement of the Pollution of Rivers Act there is no hope that the Tweed would be kept free by special plans in order to see that the water used in the paper-making process was returned pure to the river. I do not think that paper-making would be a success in the Tweed Valley, but I think that other industries would be a success there, and I hope that the Midlothian position will be examined with the greatest care.
The Secretary of State for Scotland painted a glowing picture, but I regret to say that there is a reverse side to that picture. When he mentioned the great improvement in productivity, I want to remind him that from 1948, basing production in that year at 100, we find that by the second-quarter of 1951 there had been a steady increase to 116 per cent. The figures show, however, a marked decline since then right up to the third-quarter of 1952. It is true to say that there has been an increase in manpower in the coal mining industry which is the basis of all industry in Scotland. But it has not, for instance, improved the Port of Leith, where we used to ship abroad thousands of tons of coal every week. I am afraid that we must take cognisance of the fact that Scotland is not playing its part in regard to coal production.
A certain member of the National Coal Board once stated that 600,000 men were quite sufficient for the coal industry of this country. I suggest that that is all nonsense—just sheer nonsense. Let us consider it in regard to opencast coal. There are certain areas in East Scotland where there is not sufficient cover on the top of the coal to allow men to operate it from the point of view of deep-mining. It has to be opencast. I regret to say that there has been considerable opposition towards the opencasting of coal. I believe in deep-mining and I believe that our opencast operations should not be terminated as they are being terminated today.
I firmly believe that once a coal face is open it must not be lost sight of. It can be quite simply followed because all that is required is to build from the coal face when the coal face begins to take the dip to deep working by building two or three reinforced tunnels. There is plenty of clay in Midlothian ready to be made into bricks, and these tunnels can be reinforced and the land reinstated correctly. The coal face can be followed by the old miners, no longer physically fit to go down deep pits, and they can train our young fellows and give them a thorough apprenticeship. Thus they would open out face. Instead of the Ministry of Labour saying that no more recruits will be trained at the Fife Colliery, which is a training centre, we would have any amount of coal opened out ready.
It will be apparent from what has been said that we have much in Scotland to which to apply ourselves. I trust that the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Trade will ask the assistance, not only of the Ministry of Transport, but also of the Treasury, because unless we get sufficient money with which to finance our operations, then, as the hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire said, disaster will face us in Scotland.

7.21 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Walter Elliot: This debate has varied between wide-ranging speeches, covering the whole field of our activities in Scotland, and comparatively narrow and limited points. I propose to address myself rather to the narrow and limited points than to the wide-ranging speeches; although they also have been very interesting, because we are now changing over from a period of shortages to a period of surpluses, and that is exactly the thought behind a great many of the speeches which have been made and behind a certain amount of the apprehension which exists in our country, both in industry and, to some extent, even in agriculture.
I would only say, when we are considering this problem, that for most of our history there never were more than a million of us and even today there are only 5 million of us, and we did not get where we are now merely by working. There are many other people who work pretty hard, too. We got there by thinking. I do not believe that efficiency merely comes by exhorting the miners to work harder. There are a great many other things we have to do. I am sure that modern industry is not merely a question of capital and labour. It is a question of capital, labour and invention. The necessity for thinking out our problems is just as vital as the necessity for working hard at our problems once they have been thought out.
There is one relatively small point, but still one of considerable importance, where, I think, a positive suggestion for greater efficiency could be made. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) spoke of the out-door conveyor belts, our roads running through the country, and asked, indeed, whether the movement outside the factory was as

smooth and as efficient as the movement inside.
I am sure that is not always so, and there is one example of it which is very close to my own constituency and to my own heart, and that is the congestion which exists on either side of the Clyde. This enormous industrial centre was brought into being by the great Firth running up through it, and afterwards by the work of the whole community of Glasgow in digging out the river and making it fit to carry the great ships launched on it. But we have six-and-a-half miles of water frontage with only four bridges, and the congestion is becoming intolerable.
There is no question as to the inefficiency of what is going on there. It takes as long to get from Newton Mearns to the Central Station, a distance of about seven miles, as it does to get from there to Edinburgh. The traffic piles up until the traffic lights have to be switched off and the traffic controlled by the police by hand. The ferries which are running to capacity carry 3,000 vehicles a day each. As for the bridges, the Victoria Bridge carries 7,418 vehicles a day, the Glasgow Bridge 9,030 vehicles a day, and the King George V Bridge 12,884 vehicles a day. All these are choked, and further relief of that congestion is urgently necessary.
There is only one way in which relief can be secured and that is by a Clyde tunnel. That project has been brought forward and agreed to time and again, but it is always said, for one reason or another, that it cannot be proceeded with just at this time. We have not one but three great Firths in Scotland, the Firth of Clyde, the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay. On each of these it is necessary to improve our communications if we are to take advantage of both our industry and our scenery. Both are great assets which we must use to the full, but we cannot so use them while vehicles pile up for miles on each side behind what is literally a bottleneck and where indignation and frustration of all kinds flourish to a most regrettable extent.
Then there is the capital waste involved. We make the most beautiful motor cars; we drill great holes in the earth. We bring up crude oil and we carry it to Grangemouth, where we refine it and put it into the tanks of our


vehicles; then they stand for half an hour at a time grinding away this machinery and puffing this expensive oil into the air and doing nothing for anybody except to poison the air in the countryside.
To remedy this is not such a great task. It was computed some time ago that £3 million would build the Clyde tunnel. The figure may have gone up since then, and I should like to know what the figure now is. It is said that it would require raw materials. It would require 3,000 tons of steel, but that figure scarcely represents three days' consumption of steel in the shipyards alone. We could enormously accelerate the general traffic, both north and south of the river, by using that small amount of raw material.
I do not speak of the strategic desirability of this tunnel, although that is also important. I do not even speak of the necessity of this tunnel for the passing through it of such things as new water supplies which are urgently necessary south of the river. We are building 15,000 houses south of the river all requiring water, which is present in unlimited quantities to the north. Here is a positive construction which could be set in hand forthwith and which could enormously increase efficiency.
It is no use raising the speed limit of heavy road vehicles from 20 to 30 miles an hour if all it means is that one arrives quicker at this gigantic bottleneck and has to stand for the next half hour grinding the bearings of one's lorry and blowing oil-fumes into the air. The city engineers have calculated that £1 million a year is wasted at that point, much of it in foreign exchange, because a great deal of that oil is bought with dollars. We use up these expensive examples of modern machinery to destroy £1 million worth a year of the most valuable thing in the world—skilled men's time.
We all, of course, also support the necessity for the road bridge over the Forth at the earliest possible moment. In my view, a road bridge over the Tay is even more necessary. For one thing, it would solve the problem which we discussed yesterday at some length, the question of the University of St. Andrews and of the University of Dundee. If we built a road bridge everyone would see

that it was ridiculous to have one university at one end of it, and another university at the other.
Let us not, however, forget this enormous waste which is going on in front of our eyes in Glasgow and which could be so easily and quickly disposed of. These matters have been before the authorities time and again, and time and again they have been shelved, postponed and pushed off from one Minister to another, from one Government to another and from one century to another. It was, in fact, in the last century that these things began to be discussed. The name of the last bridge alone is a condemnation—the King George V Bridge. It was in the reign of King George V that the last bridge, the only big, wide, modern bridge across the Clyde was built. There should be some other method of transportation. Let us have for our time a Queen Elizabeth Clyde Tunnel or, if there is some argument about the numeral, let us call it the Princess Margaret Tunnel. There is a good Scottish name on which we could all agree, and no question of a numeral enters into it.
Let us get something done. Of all the simple steps which can be taken to improve the efficiency of our country, on which everything depends, there is nothing more immediate than to start now and finish as soon as possible a new, safe, speedy and efficient method of transportation between the north and south banks of the Firth of Clyde.

7.32 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: I was rather surprised when the hon. Member for Govan (Mr. J. N. Browne) said that the issues which had been raised this afternoon were not political and that this matter was outside the party political conflict. I cannot agree. I think this debate on industry, employment and well being of Scotland is a matter in which party conflict does enter. What was said by the right hon. and gal-land Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) and the hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) can only lead one to believe that they agree that the future depends on looking into the future and planning properly for it.
But the party opposite does not believe in planning. It is no use imagining that


the industrial and economic problems of Scotland can be settled other than by conscious planning, in order not only to repair the damage of the past and the failings of the present but to prepare Scottish skill and the use of Scottish raw materials for the future, because we must not forget that engineering in all its branches is moving very quickly indeed—much faster than it moved from 1794 to the 1900s. We are moving at a tremendous pace, and Scotland should be well in the forefront of the new industries which may come into being in the next 50 years.
It was in 1794 that James Watt went to Birmingham and took the steam engine and Murdoch came from Dumfries with the gasometer. Paterson came down long before that and started the Bank of England. Since he started the Bank of England it seems to me that the thrifty Scottish people's savings drifted inevitably to London, to the great neglect of industrial development in Scotland. I suppose I should not be surprised because I have lived in Scotland for 2½ years, but I am surprised when I see in the statistics how much more thrifty they are than people south of the Border, because they save almost £1 per head of the population more than do people in England and Wales.
But the investment of these savings was on a greater scale in England and Wales than it was in Scotland, until the return of the Labour Government in 1945. Some of that tendency was reversed in the Distribution of Industry Act, and there was more conscious industrial development in Scotland than there had ever been before in relation to the capital resources available.
The hon. Member for Govan quoted from Mr. Connell, the President of the Shipbuilding Conference. I represent a constituency in which, as hon. Members know, we have a very important shipbuilding yard, and I am sure that from the point of view of quality there are no shipyards in the world which can successfully compete with the Clyde. Indeed, Mr. Connell takes the view that in matters of price, the Clyde can hold its own with any foreign shipyard in the world.
The only way in which the Clyde is feeling the effect of competition is in dates of delivery, which has a great deal to do with steel supplies and terms of

credit, very often provided by Governments of other countries to the shipowners and shipbuilding contractors. Indeed, the Japanese shipowners are making proposals to their Government, which may well be accepted, that they shall have grant loans—that is, loans free of interest—for the period of construction and on fulfilment of contracts on ships for shipowners.
I notice that some chairmen of British shipping companies at their annual meetings inform the shipyard workers that if they ask for increases in wages to which they are entitled because of the increase in the cost of basic foods, they will cancel their orders. I would remind hon. Members that bread, butter and jam are of no use to a rivetter or a boiler worker or shipwright in the shipyard. They want first-quality high protein food, and that is the very food the price of which has gone up since this Government has taken office. As I say, they have been told that if they persist in asking for this 5 per cent. increase in their wages, the orders will be cancelled. That is blackmail.
Mr. Connell in his article in the "Financial Times" says quite plainly—there is no ambiguity about it—that it is not in price that they are finding the competition hard, but in delivery dates and in the credit facilities provided by Governments of foreign countries where shipbuilding takes place. Yet merchant shipping owners in this country ask shipbuilding workers to forgo their legitimate claim, in face of all the competition which will defeat them unless we in this country adopt similar techniques in financing shipbuilding construction. Mr. Connell says that the prices of our shipbuilders are still competitive in comparison with other shipbuilding countries, but he says that their difficulty is the shortage of steel which has made the costing of shipbuilding almost impracticable.
There has been a great advance in the technique of shipbuilding. I am not a shipyard worker, but I know something about the light engineering industry, and I have taken the trouble to go to the shipbuilding industry. I find that they are becoming increasingly compelled to watch very carefully the sequence of delivery of components and sections in order to continue smooth working in the construction of ships.
By prefabrication and by an ever-increasing division of labour in the shipbuilding industry, as we have in the engineering industry, the maintenance of smooth working. The greatest factor in driving up the cost of shipbuilding today is not the workers' wages but a failure by the steel companies to fulfil their allocations of steel to the shipbuilding industry in appropriate sequence to keep the different bodies of men completely active in the construction of the ships.
The position is exactly the same in the light engineering factories. One can have the cheapest labour in the world, but if there are bottlenecks within the unit whereby bodies of workmen are unemployed because they have not the particular material required to continue their stage of the process of development costs mount enormously. With the intensive division of labour in the industry it is vital to see that that industry is provided at the right time with the right quantities of essential units of the ultimate product. That can be done only by intensive planning covering the whole shipbuilding industry.
The Government in power have accepted the resignation of Sir Edwin Plowden. No one is to take his place, and when the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), who is well supported in these matters, says that he is glad that these planners are going, I do not really understand how hon. Members opposite can come here or go to Scotland and talk about rehabilitating or rebuilding Scotland on the basis of no planning and completely free enterprise, because it just will not work in modern industry. It was all very well in the 19th century, when there was small unit production, in which a product was manufactured straight out in a small factory. That was comparatively easy, but today in the engineering industry, which is the industry I can speak of, it presents almost an insuperable problem to the individual concerns.
I put the simple proposition that we are, in Scotland, faced with the need to attract industry there—the engineering industry. There is, in my view, no industry which could possibly, on its own initiative, build in Scotland except in Glasgow or very close to it, a unit which would within itself manufacture a product from beginning to end. Not that I

approve of that sort of unit, such as one finds in the case of Ford's at Dagenham, where the whole process takes place under one roof—the iron ore, the steel bar, the steel sheet, the engine and body components and the motor car. There is a town dependent on one cumulative process. If the motor car industry flops the whole concern flops. I am not arguing in favour of that sort of enterprise, although I know that is the tendency in modern industry.
In my constituency we have Singer's, who manufacture the product right out, with one exception, which they buy in Worcester. Why it is not made in Scotland I do not know, but it is not. The fact has to be faced, however, that the conveyor belt inside a factory will defeat economically any form of transport between one factory and another by road or rail. For many years I worked for a company which had 11 factories the maximum distance between which was about seven miles. Components were carried from one factory to another by vans, low-loaders and lorries of all kinds. The activities of those 11 factories were put under one roof, in one unit, and every component was moved from its source of manufacture along a conveyor belt and was not touched by hand until it reached the assembly line. The cost of production was reduced tremendously compared with the previous system of conveyance by road.
I have in my constituency the area from Kilsyth to Cumbernauld of which the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Balfour) spoke earlier. We have there 22,000 people. The area is scheduled for factories, but the county council of Dumbartonshire requires a considerable increase in the grant to do something about roads in that area. If there is to be any industry which is complementary to industry in Glasgow or maybe in Falkirk or Denny, or Bonnybridge, something will have to be done about the roads because they are hopelessly out of date, and yet they will have to be used by traffic for which Class I roads are required whereas these are Class III roads. But every year the grant to Dumbartonshire County Council for the repair and maintenance of the roads and their development is being cut far below the minimum estimates which they submit.
I do not believe that industry will come to Scotland merely by our asking the


industrialist if he will come. I would strongly resent—as was proposed by the hon. Member for Govan—saying to an industrialist, who, presumably, would be a chartered accountant or a man of money—most industrialists today are chartered accountants—that they can have the premises, the machinery, the land and everything, and that the universities of Scotland, publicly supported, will supply the trained technicians, and that the financiers and directors will have the labour and skill of the people and will have their undertaking run almost for nothing or very cheaply, when large profits can already be made.
I see no reason why, if we have to do all that for these people, we cannot do it for ourselves.

Mr. J. N. Browne: I am sure that the hon. Member and I see eye to eye. What I said, and prefaced my remarks by saying so, concerned a very narrow point. If the hon. Member is referring to all the industrial areas of Scotland, I agree. I was referring particularly—and only to some extent—to featherbedding in areas like Buckie and Peterhead, where it seems impossible otherwise to get industry. That is all I was referring to.

Mr. Bence: I appreciate that, of course, but to be quite candid, I am getting a little fed up with featherbedding those who finance industrial enterprise.

Mr. Browne: Will the hon. Member make some other suggestions about providing employment in those areas?

Mr. Bence: Yes. I would make a suggestion that the Scottish Office should become the initiator of these enterprises, feeling confident that it can get the labour, skill and technicians as easily as any featherbedded private industrialist. I think it is quite unnecessary for Members to chase round the United States or down the East Coast of England for people with money to invest their money in Scotland. I have already pointed out that Scottish people are more thrifty than the English and save more per head of the population. Why not use their savings and not create another batch of absentee property owners in England or the United States? I do not think that is necessary. I am not in favour of featherbedding any of these people. I believe we can only

do it through conscious planning on the part of the Scottish Office in the interests of Scotland and not for the benefit of some private company.
I did not expect to be so long, but before I sit down I want to examine the vital statistics for Scotland. It is alarming to see that while the proportion of children to adults in Scotland is far higher than it is in England and Wales the proportion of men and women from 25 to 64 is lower. There is to be seen here the result of the concentration of investment of capital south of the Border, which is drawing from Scotland the most productive section of our community. This process will not only have to be stopped but reversed, because it is leading in Scotland to a complete unbalance in the population.
Unfortunately, since this Government came to power the figures have shown a tendency to get worse. They are renouncing planning. Whereas, in 1951, there were over 300 applications for sites for new industries, today the figure is 150, a considerable drop. In these circumstances, one can understand the tendency of the people between 25 and 64 to drift southwards, and they are doing it now at a faster rate than for some time.
If that continues, by the time the Government finish wrecking the plans which the Labour Government had prepared and were carrying into effect, the position will be very serious. When we come back to power, which I believe will not be long, our difficulties will be increased, because we shall have to clear up the chaos created by the refusal of the Government in practice—they pay lip-service to the principle—to get down to some conscious planning, particularly by the Scottish Department instead of feather-bedding private industrialists.
I hope that the Under-Secretary will give us an assurance that action will be taken to destroy the impression among shipbuilding workers that they are being blackmailed by the chairmen of shipping companies because they are asking for a well-deserved 5 per cent. increase in their wages. We should like an assurance that if private enterprise fails to establish new industries in Scotland then the Department in Edinburgh will do it themselves.

7.50 p.m.

Commander C. E. M. Donaldson: This debate has ranged from east to west, and I am delighted that I am to have the opportunity to say a few words before it starts moving from north to south, because I feel that once it gets north of the Tay it will be a very different type of debate altogether. The thing that characterises debates such as this, particularly during the last year or two, is the measure of agreement there is on all sides of the Committee, and the way in which Members of all parties address their thoughts and their words to the problems which face Scotland today. I want very briefly to bring the Committee back to a consideration of one or two suggestions which were made in the Report referred to by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian and Peebles (Mr. Pryde).
This Report refers to the difficulties which are faced in a dual measure in the South-East of Scotland, and I refer particularly to the counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk, which join those of Midlothian and Peebles. A very searching investigation has been carried out by the Committee, which sat at the request of the Scottish Council under the chairmanship of a distinguished border industrialist, Mr. A. D. Anderson-Scott. Time does not permit me, nor do I wish, to go into the matter in any great detail except to emphasise that the problems which face us in the South-West of Scotland, and particularly in my constituency are of a two-fold nature. One relates to the rural or landward areas, and the other to the towns and burghs and the textile industry connected with them.
The problem is a simple one, and is related to the steady but obvious decline in the population in the more remote rural areas, and on the hillsides of Scotland. That, of course, has been accentuated by the lack of amenity. Hill farmers are not long in telling about the difficulties they are up against in getting replacement of labour or additional farm hands for the farm. One of the first questions a farmer is asked when he interviews a prospective servant is, is there a bus service, then is there electricity and, thirdly, what amenities are available within a reasonable distance? If those things

are not available generally the job is refused.
In my constituency where houses are available for farm workers they have been unoccupied for some months. I feel that we must do everything we can to see that the countryside is properly developed. In the valleys and on the hillsides, such as one finds in my constituency, there must be some enjoyment and incentive for the people, so that those who are there will remain and those who are thinking about living in the country will go there.
The difficulty may not altogether be with the Scottish Office, and certainly in the matter of electricity supplies there has been a lack of development in the southern sub-area of South-Eastern Scotland. I do not wish to elaborate that, and perhaps if I did so I should be out of order, but I wish to draw the attention of those concerned in the Scottish Office to the fact that there is a great demand for electricity, and while we realise that in many cases the areas are sparsely populated and the distances are long, thereby making it uneconomic to provide electricity supplies, nevertheless if we are to maintain agricultural production and increase the number of sheep on the hills we have to do something for these lonely and remote parts of the country. If we are to increase our beef stock we must make amenities available to the people who wish to reside and work there.
The tweed industry is the foundation of industrial life in South-East Scotland. It has long been felt—and this Report merely emphasises the matter again—that the industrial development in the border towns of Scotland has for too long been closely associated with the textile woollen trade and in later years with the hosiery trade and certain other manufactures associated with towns on the border like Galashiels, Selkirk and so on. To overcome that suggestions have been made by those who have piloted this Report. It is not necessary to enumerate the schemes in detail, but they are there for consideration, and I trust that my right hon. Friend, his colleagues and officials as well as those who are interested in the preservation and expansion of these great industries in South-East Scotland will study the Report.
Reports in themselves are useless. We have had many Reports in the past, some of which have been referred to,


and it is essential that they should be studied and analysed. One of the important features of these Reports is the acknowledgment that the implementation of the suggestions contained in them depends upon the support of the burghs, county councils, private industries and the tweed and textile industries already established. Some reference has been made to Government support for increasing plant already in existence. It may be that other speakers will elaborate that point. It is necessary that producers in the tweed and hosiery trade and those of us engaged in our country's affairs should all be thinking about converting to action the suggestions made in these Reports.
I would pay a tribute to those who have compiled the Reports. In Scotland we are blessed with people who, in their desire to do the best for their country, give willingly of their time, ability and talents to do these things. But unless we implement the recommendations we shall not be able to establish and maintain the full employment we all desire in Scottish agriculture and manufacture.

8.2 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison: The Secretary of State for Scotland enlarged on the Government decision on the Cairncross Report. The right hon. Gentleman felt that if we had a certain amount of capital to distribute it would be better to reserve it for the Development Areas rather than to spread it over a wider field.
I wish to call attention to a district already in a Development Area, in order to prevent it from becoming as derelict as some parts of the Highlands are already. This area comprises the districts of Shotts, Harthill, Cleland, Salsburgh and Allanton. Those districts may be known to the Joint Under-Secretary of State. What is happening there and what we are told may happen in less than 10 years' time will have serious repercussions both on the people who live there and in other areas.
The vast majority of the workers there are miners. There is little or no alternative employment. The unemployed already on the register are what may be called long-term unemployed. In the main they are men suffering from pneumoconiosis or other industrial injuries,

who are in receipt of partial compensation or pensions under the Industrial Injuries Act. These are the men who are affected by the decision of the Minister of National Insurance which we debated last week. They are cruelly hit by that decision. It was bad enough for them to be long-term unemployed in receipt of unemployment benefit, but they are now to have indignity added to indignity and will be handed over to the National Assistance Board.
The Lanarkshire coalfield has suffered immeasureable harm under the system of private ownership of coal. I shall not develop that theme today, because I consider my duty as the representative of the people of that area is to attempt to persuade the Government to make plans for their future. That seems to me to be a wiser course than to refer to the past. My deep concern is for the livelihood, well-being and happiness of those people among whom I have lived for the whole of my life and whom I have the honour to represent in this House.
In that area at the present time there is a population of slightly over 25,000. I say to the Ministers concerned that unless much serious thought is given to the prospects of these people, thought that will result in concrete action, theirs is a very bleak future indeed. A number of pits have closed in the last few years. Reorganisation in other pits has brought about further redundancy. The Secretary of State said that 82 per cent. of the men made redundant by closures and reorganisations had found work in the developing coalfields. I knew that was about the figure, and I know that under the procedure planned by the National Coal Board and the Ministry of Labour, it is easier for miners to get to a new area when a pit closes, than was the case in the past. All the old hardships have been mitigated so far as possible.
But that 82 per cent. leaves 18 per cent. of those redundant without work at all. These people are men in the older age categories and those who are immobile for one reason or another. These are the people still living in the area I have been describing and in the district which was described by my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Balfour). It is a tragic situation for that 18 per cent. in this area. They have no hope of work for the rest of their lives.
I do not think a worse fate can befall any man than to know that he has lost his job and that for the rest of his life there is no possibility of his getting employment. It means not only that he has to reduce his standard of living, but also that his loved ones are denied those things they have the right to expect, and which he could provide for them when he was in work. No; it is much worse than that. A man in that position feels that he is no use to anyone. It makes him very depressed, and the fact that he is so depressed means that time and time again great unhappiness is brought to a complete household when it could have been avoided if the man had some hope of work in the near future.
That is the position at present in the area which I have mentioned, the older men and the immobile men being without work, and it is with the object of preventing that position from worsening that I raise the subject today. I seek the support of the Secretary of State, who, as my right hon. Friend said, is ultimately held responsible for the well-being of Scotland, and he will also require the support of the President of the Board of Trade, the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Supply. All these Ministers and their Ministries must concern themselves with this if the future of the area is to be safeguarded.
My information, which is from reliable sources, is that all the pits in the area except one will be closed in less than 10 years' time. I know that before a pit is closed there has to be close consultation between the National Union of Mine-workers and the management at pit level and that the consultation is carried from pit level right up to the Scottish Area of the National Union of Mineworkers and the Scottish Division of the National Coal Board. But if, after all that discussion has taken place, we find that in less than 10 years' time the position is as it is presented today, what then is the future of the area to be? We must remember that, although the population is just over 25,000, the vast majority of the men are miners and there are many miners from elsewhere who daily travel into the area to find employment in the pits which are threatened with closure. The problem thus affects a larger district than the area I have described.
My people are intensely worried. One of their main topics of conversation when I meet them is: What is our future to be? They are rightly asking: What action will the Government take? They rightly ask me: What action are you taking to safeguard our future? I have been in constant contact with the Scottish Division of the National Coal Board—I have a number of documents and letters here—and I have explored the possibilities of further coal developments in and around the area. That exploration has proved almost conclusively that the prospects are nil. I hope that the National Coal Board itself will be absolutely certain that it has explored every place which can possibly be explored before it finally says that there is no further chance of development in that area or in any area round about it in Lanarkshire.
When the N.C.B. and the N.U.M. were tackling the problem of re-organisation in the Scottish coalfields they thought that work would be found in the Development Areas of Fife, the Lothians, and Ayrshire for miners made redundant in Lanarkshire. Even if that is feasible, it still leaves the problem of the older miner and the immobile miner and the problem of a great wastage of social assets.
On Tuesday, 17th February, I asked a Question of the President of the Board of Trade. I had originally put the Question to the Secretary of State for Scotland but it was transferred to the President of the Board of Trade. It asked the President what plans he had for new industry for Shotts and district in view of the report by the National Coal Board that all but one of the pits in the area would be closed within the next 10 years. The reply which I got from the Parliamentary Secretary was most unsatisfactory. It showed that there was a complacency in the Department and among the Ministers about this. The Parliamentary Secretary said:
I understand that several pits in the Shotts area are expected to cease production within the next 10 years, but the National Coal Board are developing extensive deposits elsewhere in Scotland, where miners will be wanted. My right hon. Friend will carefully watch these developments and continue to encourage industrial expansion to provide sufficient employment in Shotts and areas nearby for those for whom suitable opportunities cannot be found elsewhere."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 17th February, 1953: Vol. 511, c. 100.]


I want to show why I think that answer is complacent. In the first place, they will "continue to encourage," but no new industry at all has so far come to the district, except a factory which provides work for about 800 women, and a very good thing it was that it came to the district.
I want to know whether the President of the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State believe that there will be work for the redundant miners in the developing coalfields. If the President believes that, on what grounds does he base his belief? Last week in the "Glasgow Herald" there were three articles by a special correspondent headed:
Scottish Development Policy on Trial.
On Thursday, 9th July, in the third article I found these words which perturbed me very greatly:
The intention is that the increase of output from the Fife and Clackmannan field should be attained with an increase of only 6 per cent. in manpower on the present total of about 24,000 workers. The massive transfers of miners from the West of Scotland envisaged in the report of the Scottish Coalfields Committee are no longer thought to be necessary. The new dispositions provide for a relatively small entry from Lanarkshire and a gradual movement of local men from one section of the field to another.
If that is true, and I am inclined to think it is true, what a serious picture these words paint for Lanarkshire, and particularly for the area whose problems I am stressing. One of two things are bound to happen. The first alternative is that a great number of miners will be transferred from Lanarkshire to the developing areas, leaving behind the older men, the immobile miners and those who, for good reasons, do not wish to transfer. But if that statement is true, that alternative is not a possibility. What is the second alternative? That in a few years these pits will close and the majority of the men will be left unemployed in Lanarkshire, again especially in the Shotts area.
I realise that the two alternatives present great difficulties and problems to Her Majesty's Ministers, to the local authority concerned, to me as the Member of Parliament, and particularly to the men and women whose livelihood is jeopardised. All of us must work together to find a solution for these problems and the only solution is alternative industries.

I am glad that the President of the Board of Trade is listening so carefully because this problem presents the right hon. Gentleman particularly with a great opportunity, in conjunction with the other Ministers, to prevent what is now a fairly thriving community from becoming derelict.
If every effort is made to plan this area, as is put into the planning of new towns, we shall have success in our planning. At the weekend I went through East Kilbride. It was heartening to see the development there—new factories, new shopping centres, new houses all being built. To ensure the future of the people in the area of Shotts would present fewer difficulties, than the building up of a new town, whether at East Kilbride or at any other place, because we have almost all the social assets that are necessary. We have the houses, the churches, the schools, the shopping centres and the halls. The local authority are much concerned about this matter. They own 3,035 houses in the villages I have mentioned; indeed, they own 55·1 per cent. of all the houses in the area. There has been an enormous capital investment by Lanarkshire County Council there. Since 1940 they have sunk in capital £172,000 on sewerage works alone, and they still have a total debt outstanding of £90,600 in respect of these works.
One can see then the great problems that would face the local authority if something were not done to ensure the future of this area. The local authority are also worried because they know that, if nothing is done to plan the future of this area, it will have repercussions in other parts of Lanarkshire. I can give the Secretary of State, the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister of Labour the assurance that Lanarkshire County Council will give every possible help in trying to work with them to find alternative industry for this area. In paragraph 52, page 28 of the Cairncross Report I find these words:
Where the staple industry of a town has suffered a severe setback and it proves impossible to restore the fortunes of that industry, it would be desirable to try to prevent general distress by impressing on industrialists the desirability of putting new factories there.
The staple industry of this area is not only suffering a setback; it will be almost completely annihilated. If that is the


case the situation is worse than that envisaged in the Cairncross Report, and since the situation is worse, the Government must make their measures more drastic. We have the Distribution of Industries Act and that has been criticised today. Its powers are not nearly strong enough to ensure that the drastic remedies which must be taken for this area and the other areas will be taken. I could make suggestions, but I know that many of my hon. Friends wish to speak. I am willing at any time to discuss them with the Ministers concerned.
The Cairncross Report also says in paragraph 58, page 29:
The community must have something more to offer than unemployed workers; it must have the facilities and the atmosphere that will let transplanted enterprise take firm root.
I have shown that the facilities are there. Besides all those social assets this area is situated halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh on the main arterial road and on the main railway between both those cities. If we add this to all the other facilities, it will be seen that we have the facilities. I believe strongly that we have the atmosphere which the report suggests.
This is an area with a remarkable community spirit, as almost every hon. Member of this House who knows it will agree. It has a great cultural background which has been fostered by the people themselves. They have never depended either on Government or local authority funds to foster this cultural background. These people have shown time and time again that they possess initiative to a high degree. They are people who get together and, by their initiative get things done. Again I can give the Ministers concerned many examples if they wish to have them. These people have been congratulated on their great initiative by, among others, Lord Bilsland, Chairman of the Council for Development. Again I stress that the atmosphere is there which will let transplanted enterprise take firm root.
On page 13 the Cairncross Report says this:
In Kilmarnock and Leslie a decline in the number of miners has been more than offset by the growth of manufacturing industry.

There is a live example of what can be done. Again I stress that, if it can be done there, and if we are all determined not to allow really fine people to be thrown on the scrap-heap, as some of them have already been thrown, then all of us must get together and find what alternative industry can be got there to make it another Kilmarnock or, for that mater, another Hamilton, because Hamilton used to be an old mining village.

8.29 p.m.

Mr. Niall Macpherson: The first thing I want to do is to congratulate the Government on their representation on the Front Bench today. I have never seen so many Ministers on the Front Bench during a Scottish debate. In addition to the Scottish Ministers we have here the President of the Board of Trade and we have had the Minister of Labour and National Service and his Parliamentary Secretary, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power, the Minister of National Insurance and the Minister of Supply and I dare say that others have been present as well. I never remember having seen so many Departmental representatives present during a Scottish debate. It is greatly to the credit of the Government. It shows how seriously they take the problems of Scotland.

Mr. Woodburn: I support what the hon. Gentleman has said, but may I remind him that on this occasion the Opposition invited them?

Mr. Macpherson: I can remember occasions, to which references have been made in the past, when invitations were not accepted. It is to the credit of the Government that the invitations were accepted this time.
The second thing I wish to do is to follow the admirable speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison). The problem with which she dealt is heart-rending. It is not peculiar to her area. It is one which is bound to crop up from time to time, because, unfortunately, coal mines do get worked out. This fits in with something which I have to say later. I can remember a poignant appeal by the hon. Member for Bothwell (Mr. Timmons), when the Labour Government were in power, to exactly the same effect. I am sure that


the Government are doing, and will do, everything they can to deal with this problem. I hope to be able to give an indication of some of the ways in which I for one think that the problem ought to be tackled.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has indicated that, in general, there is a limited amount of aid to be given. The Committee have to consider what aid if any, financial or otherwise, we should ask the Government to give to industry in Scotland. We would all agree that it is most important that the aid should be concentrated where it is most needed and where it can be most effective.
It is important to realise that these needs are continually changing. Reference has been made to the pre-war needs of the distressed areas. As the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North indicated, the needs of the distressed areas, which later were expanded to become the Development Areas, have by no means been met. This is a continuing problem. There are some places in the Development Areas which still have high unemployment figures. On the other hand, the problem was to get peace-time industry into operation again in places which needed industry most.
After that came the problem of rearmament. The Committee would like an assurance that Scotland has received a proper share of the rearmament industry. We may argue whether it has been placed in the right locations. We would claim that, as the unemployment figures for Scotland are higher than those for the United Kingdom as a whole, it would be reasonable to place a higher proportion of the rearmament industry in Scotland, especially in those places in which unemployment is high.
It may be that the area represented by the hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North and the East Coast towns, where unemployment is above average, are places which have a special claim for rearmament industry. The report of the Clydesdale Bank indicates that three out of the four Government assisted industries that were started in Scotland in 1952 were rearmament industries. Undoubtedly, the Government are doing something in this respect. Initially, one of the limiting factors was urgency. It was imperative, in many cases, to start

rearmament industries were the requisite basic skills already existed.
There is, of course, a very much longer-term problem. First of all, there is the fact that unemployment in Scotland is higher than in the rest of the United Kingdom. Secondly, there is the drift from certain areas such as the Border, the South-West and the Highlands. The post-war situation made it necessary for the Government to assume responsibility for the location of industry, and the Government can offer inducements to go to Development Areas which have not been referred to today. Among other things, they can give loans to companies setting up in the Development Areas. On the other hand, the Government could discourage industries from expanding in their own existing locations by the withholding of planning permission and building licences, or even of the supplies of raw materials.
Such negative controls are becoming less effective than they were. For example, in regard to raw materials, the necessity for such control has largely passed away, but, of course, planning and building permission is still a very effective control. Indeed, an example has been given in the debate today, by the hon. Member for Midlothian and Peebles (Mr. Pryde), of a case in which that control has been exercised. I was given the impression by a Scottish Office report that such controls were not being exercised at the present time. At any rate, it is certainly still not only desirable but essential for the Government to exercise general supervision over the location of industry.
The fact remains that the number of new industries started in Scotland has been dropping from year to year. We ought to recognise that it was inevitable that that should happen as the changeover to peace-time production progressed. On the other hand, it is quite essential that the impetus of new industry in Scotland should be kept up. There are still needs to be met in the Development Areas, but there are undoubtedly needs to be met elsewhere, and I want to deal with that problem. How should those needs be met? One suggestion has been made that the Development Areas should be enlarged or that their number should be increased, but it has been pointed out by my right hon. Friend that the more


we expand the Development Areas the less becomes the incentive to go to them.
The Development Area really postulates, in my view, a fairly wide variety of skilled labour such as can only be found in the heavily populated areas. It may be that, where there is a special and isolated problem, where there is a high percentage of unemployment—in Stornoway, for example—a decision has to be taken either to encourage the population to go elsewhere, or, alternatively, to make it an "extra special" area, and for the Government to intervene more directly than it does even in the Development Areas to build up a new type of industry there. We on this side need not shrink from that kind of solution in such "extra special" areas.
The Cairncross Committee had some wise words to say on this subject, and made three propositions. They said, in the first place, that it was desirable—and I think it is most important and that it is desirable—that natural industrial expansion should be assisted and accelerated. Then they went on to say:
Where a gradual contraction has been in progress and where no special advantages can be offered to new firms looking for suitable locations … so long as the contraction is gradual and no problems of top-heavy age structure or substantial wastage of social capital are involved, we see no particular reason for bringing pressure on industrialists to select those towns in preference to others.
The other thing they say is that in prosperous agricultural centres some industry should be encouraged to develop.
It is important to realise that there is also the problem to which the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North referred, and that is of an industry which is dying or is, indeed, dead. Where an area is wholly or largely dependent upon one industry, substitute industries have to be found. In my constituency of Dumfries there was this kind of problem, and I will cite it because it is an instructive example. An industry was established there. One of the difficulties that confronted it was that the site that was chosen had insufficient room to expand. No doubt it was the industry's own fault. Anyway, that industry and other industries in Dumfries came to an end, and there was a serious unemployment problem.
Two new industries of considerable importance were then attracted to the area, and other similar industries have since been started. So far as I know, the only special Government assistance that was given took the form of an allocation of additional houses, and assistance to the local authorities in the provision of adequate services.
There were, however, two factors involved in this matter, and one was most important. It was that both those industries had the capital available. I will develop that point in a minute or two.

Mr. William Ross: I think I know one of the plants of which the hon. Member is talking. I may be wrong, and if so perhaps the President of the Board of Trade will put me right, but I think one of the factories was set up as the result of research and development carried out by a private enterprise firm, and that it was piloted by that firm at the request and under the guidance of the Board of Trade

Mr. Macpherson: I think the hon. Gentleman is right in that it was done in co-operation with the Board of Trade. I believe that buildings were in existence there which belonged to the Government. There has been a considerable expansion of building since.

Mr. Ross: The point I am making is that the stimulus came originally from the Board of Trade. That was long before the plant went from Ayrshire to Dumfries.

Mr. Macpherson: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is referring to the location or to the research and development, but I have no doubt there was co-operation with the Board of Trade. I am not fully informed about that matter, so perhaps the President of the Board of Trade will tell me about it. I am not making any point about that at all. It is really a side issue.
There are three things to remember where an industry is dying or is already dead. The first is timely action for new industry to take the place of the dying one. It must be timely. I would pay tribute to the splendid work that the Scottish Council have been doing. The second is that there should be an absence of any handicap imposed by the Government on


new industry going there. It seems odd that one should have to say that.
The third is that, as I have already mentioned, sites should be prepared and serviced by the local authorities in advance of demand to attract the new ventures. I would go further and say that the sites should have room for expansion on the spot for an industry that succeeds, so that it should not have to go elsewhere. It is futile to create a new industry and encourage it and then do something to frustrate it. I do not say that the Government do anything purposely to frustrate the Ardil plant. I am sure that that is not so. Ardil is a wool substitute made from groundnut meal. I am told that, chemically and physically, it has much the same properties as wool. It can be blended with wool and can be used as a substitute for wool in blends with cotton, rayon, nylon or silk.
When the D Scheme was introduced the Government subjected this new product to a fiscal handicap. No doubt that was done inadvertently. I understand that if there is a 15 per cent. proportion of wool in the material it is placed in class A. If there is less it is placed in class B. In that case the D level is less than half of what it is in class A. Where Ardil is mixed with anything except wool that classification makes an artificial discrimination against Ardil. No doubt the home producer of wool may feel that Ardil may compete with home-produced wool. I think that that is a mistaken view because I am told that Ardil used with home-produced wool provides a finer and softer finish.
In any case, we are anxious to build in this country industries the products of which can take the place of imported products and, also, can contribute very largely to the solution of our export problem. In Ardil, the plant for which has cost a great deal of money to establish. I think that we have such a product. I am sure that the President of the Board of Trade will agree that it would be a mistake to hamper its development in any way. One of the most important prerequisites is that the Government at least must abstain from handicapping a new industry in any way.
It seems to me that there are two main deterrents to enterprise at the present time. The first is the difficulty in making a profit in competition with existing

established enterprises, especially when those were established at a time when the capital cost was very much lower. That is a factor which no doubt will tend to diminish in importance, but will never wholly disappear. The second is the difficulty in building sufficient reserves for expansion with taxation at existing levels. It may seem odd, but a person with an inventive turn of mind, or one who is anxious to establish himself in industry, will be seriously deterred if he will never be able to get past the walls of the relatively small factory that may be established for him in a Development Area. It may be necessary, at some time, to do what is being done in other countries; that is, to consider tax holidays or differential taxation for the new enterprises in areas in which it is specially desired to encourage industry.
Then there is the very important question of obtaining capital. I differ to some extent from my hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. J. N. Browne). I do not think it would be desirable—and in this matter I share the views expressed by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence)—to present the whole thing on a plate to the industrialist. It is much better for him, on the basis of his reputation and his capacity, to go out and get the capital that he requires. But he must be able to get that capital.

Mr. J. N. Browne: My hon. Friend is not right in suggesting that it is necessarily the firms which need capital which should go to these areas. We want the firms with capital, who want to stay in business, to do that. We do not want those firms who have not got the capital. They are the people who so easily go down.

Mr. McInnes: Fish and chips, wrapped up in paper?

Mr. Macpherson: I did not understand the point of that intervention.
If local authorities are encouraged to establish factories there will be some rather unlooked-for results. In the first place, rating capacity is already being strained, and I doubt if it would be advisable to allow local authorities to build factories entirely with Government money. If they do so, in advance of inquiries,


the factories may easily prove to be of the wrong size and type.
The situation in a relatively small area is entirely different from what it is in a large community, where many factories of different sizes can be built. In any case, it is wrong in principle that a local authority should have a vested interest in some industries within its area and not in others. It is essential that they should be impartial. To that extent, I disagree with the recommendations of the Cairncross Committee. It is obviously necessary that local authorities should have the sites and services ready. The Government have assisted and are assisting in that respect.

Mr. James H. Hoy: In what way?

Mr. Macpherson: They are assisting by the grant they are giving under the Rural Water and Sewerage Acts, and other similar Acts.

Mr. T. Fraser: Not at all.

Mr. Macpherson: I think I am right in saying that assistance has been given in a particular case in Dumfries, of which I am aware.

Mr. Fraser: Assistance has been given under Section 3 of the 1945 Distribution of Industry Act, and such assistance is being continued in respect of schemes which were approved some considerable time ago, but we have been informed by the President of the Board of Trade that no new schemes under that Section of that Act are being approved.

Mr. Macpherson: I hope that my right hon. Friend will deal with that point. I am sure that many hon. Members on this side of the Committee regard it as important that that kind of aid should be available. The question arises as to where the capital is to be provided. I was very struck by one observation in the Clydesdale Bank report. It was there stated that out of total advances of £24 million made to the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, only £1 million had been advanced to Scottish industry.
I should like consideration to be given to the establishment of a finance corporation for Scotland alone, for such a finance corporation might well merge the

functions of both the Finance Corporation for Industry and the I.C.F.C. I would only observe, in passing, that if the Clydesdale Bank think it necessary to point this out, that is a fairly clear indication that something more is needed than the existing banking facilities in Scotland. Scotland should not have to come to London for finance.
Lastly, I want to deal with diversity. There is, of course, a varying shortage of labour in agriculture and the coal mines and some consider—this view has been expressed today—that to establish new industries in agricultural areas will result in a further depletion of labour in agriculture. Some, I suspect, take the same view about coal mines. I believe exactly the contrary to be true, particularly in the mining areas. If a young man has to choose either to go into the coal mines or to leave the area altogether and seek work elsewhere, he will be more likely to go elsewhere than he would if the choice were wider and he will be less likely to go into coal mines.
We must also consider the question of the womenfolk. I want to quote an example from my own constituency, that of the Sanquhar-Kirkconnel area. Many new houses have been built there and many mining families transferred there from Lanarkshire and elsewhere. Yet, in spite of the new houses, many miners and their families have drifted back to their old homes—and we have to ask why. There is the normal homesickness, of course, but I am certain that it is greatly accentuated by lack of amenities. There has been great pressure for the provision of a miners' welfare centre, but capital restrictions apparently make that difficult In my view, capital restrictions should not be allowed to stand in the way in cases like that, and I urge the Government to give special consideration to such matters.
I asked a Question today about the closure of a cinema in the area because, although it is a rural area, the cinema itself is in a small burgh, and the small burgh is not entitled to the advantage of the tax relaxation, whereas the larger village nearby gets it. That is a most extraordinary state of affairs. Further, women have to travel long distances to get employment. I am told that one of the main reasons why miners go back home is because their womenfolk are accustomed to employment but cannot get it locally. It seems to me of the


utmost importance that work for the women should be brought to that area.
It is also important from the social point of view because one day, inevitably, these coal mines will be worked out. It is essential, if we are to get a diversified pattern of industry in the area, to start doing it now and to establish the skills on which further expansion may be based. I am convinced that it is essential and that it is one of the ways of avoiding the very difficulties about which the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire (Miss Herbison) told us.
I apologise to the Committee for being so long, but these are matters of great importance. I believe that the real key to progress and prosperity in Scotland and the rest of the country lies in the provision of private saving and company saving, both of which must depend in the long run in lower taxation, and also in proper facilities for the provision of finance for industry.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. James H. Hoy: In winding up this debate for tonight on behalf of my hon. and right hon. Friends I would first put a question to the President of the Board of Trade. There seems to be some dispute as to whether or not Section 3 of the Distribution of Industry Act, 1945, has been cancelled, and I should be grateful if, before I proceed further, the right hon. Gentleman would inform us whether or not it has been.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): The matter was dealt with at very great length in a debate a little time ago. It is rather complex, and I would rather deal with it in the course of my remarks.

Mr. Hoy: That is true: it was dealt with a considerable time ago. There is no use in the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) asking the local authorities to undertake this work because the local authorities have tremendous financial burdens, and there is no use in asking them to take over this work unless we tell them from where the money is to come. By Section 3 of the 1945 Act finances were made available to local authorities for this particular job. I thought that in the debate which took place here earlier this year the President of the Board of Trade made it perfectly clear that as far as he

was concerned that Section of that Act no longer existed.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Dumfries also referred to the fact that there are so many Ministers present. Of course they are present, because the Opposition took the precaution of putting their Votes on the Order Paper. That does not detract in any way from our gratitude to them for appearing, and we are glad that they are here, but that is the reason why they are here. After all, the Ministries the hon. Gentleman mentioned are national Ministries which deal with Scotland as well as the rest of the country, and because of that those Ministers have good reason to be here. When one raises problems which affect a Department's work in Scotland one must expect either the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary to be present, and I should hope that that would apply no matter what party was in office.
Now I would convey congratulations, as, I am sure, all hon. Members would, to my hon. Friend the Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Balfour), who braved the task of making his maiden speech tonight. I know he was pretty reticent about doing it. One has, I know, a feeling of great nervousness when one has to undertake the job. I am certain we were all impressed by the remarks he had to make.
When this debate was first mooted it was felt by the Opposition that we should give two days to it to allow every Member who wished to make his or her contribution, and it was hoped that by pooling all ideas we might find solutions to our problems. Prior to its taking place a deputation of my hon. Friends and I went to see the Ministers concerned. We said at that meeting that what was worrying us were the tendencies to unemployment in Scotland. I am not placing them any higher at the moment. We hoped that the Secretary of State might open by replying on those points.
I thought the Secretary of State was very disappointing in this respect. It is true that he told us what happened during the past year, and, indeed, it was a very difficult year, but I am afraid that he did not disclose very much of the Government's plans for the future. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour will be able to do something about that when he winds up.


I hope so, because my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) did in fact say that the Ministry of Labour had a special position in all this, and in fact it was the Ministry of Labour and the people there who knew all about these problems in regard to Scotland and what the unemployment figures were in each particular area.
I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be dealing much more fully with this matter than did the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Secretary of State for Scotland said what I thought was a most remarkable thing. He said that the fall in the rate of unemployment was much greater than it was in the previous year. To substantiate his statement, he also said that, of course, we had 86,000 unemployed at the beginning of the year and so the run-down was much greater. If that is to be the argument, one has only to add another 20,000 and the rundown is greater than ever. That is no argument at all for the right hon. Gentleman to use. Today we got to know the final figure, which is greater than it has been for some time, and it is that which perturbs us.
I want to say that we were not very satisfied with the statement about the future policy of the Government or with the statement regarding the development of industry. I think that it was a pretty poor excuse which the right hon. Gentleman made when he said that it was really impossible to spread the jam over many more slices of bread as it would be all the thinner when it got to the last slices. Did it never strike the right hon. Gentleman that he might order a second pot. Maybe that would have proved the solution to his problem. I am sorry he did not think of it, but I make that suggestion to him for use the next time he goes to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Neither did I think his arguments were very strong about what had been done. In fact, he paid a tribute to actions of the past because all the things that the Secretary of State for Scotland mentioned were the result of action taken by the Labour Government. I defy the right hon. Gentleman to deny that. Whether it was the new towns at East Kilbride or Glenrothes, or whether it was the planned development of our mining fields, all

these things were the result of planning and could only have been carried out by such planning. In fact, they were a tribute to the planning that was done, and tributes have been paid by hon. Members opposite to the transfer of the miners from the worked out areas to other areas and the provision of houses for them. That was the result of planning, and it ought to be a salutary lesson to hon. and right hon. Members opposite not to be so critical when they are in opposition and then when they become Members of the Government to seek to pay tribute to it.
The right hon. Gentleman also paid a great tribute to the output of the steel industry. He said that over the past two years it had made tremendous progress, and that the Government were not prepared to let it settle there and were taking steps to denationalise the industry which has given the results which the right hon. Gentleman was so proudly boasting about today.

Mr. Patrick Maitland: rose——

Mr. Hoy: I cannot give way because I have to leave time for the Parliamentary Secretary to reply. I have sat here and listened to the debate and that is something different from what the hon. Gentleman has done. May I say this also to the right hon. Gentleman about the two announcements he made regarding development in the Highlands? We are grateful to the Government for carrying out this experiment, but I am sure that the Committee would also like to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire who did set up the Appleton Committee to inquire into this problem. Indeed the result which the Minister announced today must bring him also great satisfaction. I think it will make a contribution, and I am certain that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee are grateful for any contribution that can be made to the economic well being of the Highlands of our country.
I wish to refer to roads. The right hon. Gentleman was a little naïve in his announcement about the increase in the road grant. He said that over the next three years it was proposed to give an increase of 25 per cent. in the road grant or money for road work. I must say to him that a great part of that work—two


of the roads concerned—was work which had been previously agreed upon and postponed. If my information is correct, the two roads that he mentioned were covered by the special grant of £750,000 made by the previous Government for this and construction work; the two roads which the right hon. Gentleman has now announced as being pushed on with were two that were discussed and agreed to under the previous scheme—[Interruption.]—and, as my hon. Friend has reminded me, were discontinued under the economy cut. That means that what we are in part doing is overtaking some of the work which was postponed because of the economy cut.
I do not intend to argue that at the moment because I am not certain about what comes within the Vote. The Secretary of State had some doubt about agriculture but he appeared to have no doubt about our gold and dollar reserves. If I might say so, that seemed to be a little further away from the Vote than agriculture in Scotland.

Mr. J. Stuart: Well-being.

Mr. Hoy: Does the right hon. Gentleman wish to say something?

Mr. Stuart: I said that it was to the well-being of Scotland—that it was a prerequisite.

Mr. Hoy: I do not question its importance but when the right hon. Gentleman has some doubt about agriculture but not about American dollars I cannot see the strength of his argument.

Mr. Stuart: I was not objecting to discussing agriculture but we had a debate in the Standing Committee.

Mr. Hoy: I am well aware of that; I was there. Nor was I complaining. It was the right hon. Gentleman who raised the doubt about it, and that doubt was objected to by his hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir R. Boothby). I do not want to spend any further time on that matter now. I think that the right hon. Gentleman was going just a little too far because he preceded that statement by saying, "I do not want to introduce any political warfare into my speech but. …"
What we are discussing today, and why this Vote was put down was because of the fear in Scotland of unemployment. I am certain that no Member on this Committee would gainsay that fact. It is a real fear because whether we like it or not the people of Scotland have a continual fear that there will be a return to the days which we experienced in the years not so long ago. I am not seeking to slang the Government about this but we have to face up to the fact that since the end of the war Scotland's unemployment rate has been double that of the rest of the United Kingdom, and there is a natural fear that if a trade recession takes place we shall be less prepared to meet that situation than the rest of the United Kingdom. That is what determined us to raise this matter.
How are we going to provide for a solution to this problem? I think that we may get some help from a diversification of industry. That may be a help but I do not think that we should regard it as an alternative to our basic industries. We have got to expand our basic industries and, at the same time, get the assistance of new industries which we may attract by diversification. It is along that road that we may find success, and how we are going to do it is the question we have got to consider. Are we going to use all our energies and resources in a further extension of the Development Areas? That question has got to be answered by the Government of the day.
I would not seek to detract from the contribution that the Distribution of Industry Act has made to Scotland in our industrial belt, in Glasgow, and in the City of Dundee, where great rehabilitation has taken place. As a result of that there are thousands of men and women in Scotland tonight who are employed but who might well be unemployed if this action had not been taken. But is this going to be enough, or should we be prepared to consider taking in areas outside the Development Areas?
In this respect the Report of the Cairn-cross Committee was correct. I think they were right in suggesting that there were other areas which might well be provided with some Government assistance, and if I might say so without upsetting the Secretary of State for Scotland, I was a little astonished at the way he announced the


rejection of the Report of the Cairncross Committee. He sent a little billet-doux by the courtesy of the OFFICIAL REPORT to one of his hon. Friends rejecting this substantial scheme, which I thought was peculiar treatment to mete out to this House.

Mr. J. Stuart: I wrote a long letter to the Chairman of the Scottish Council.

Mr. Hoy: That is true, the right hon. Gentleman sent a letter to the Chairman of the Council which set up this Committee——

Mr. Stuart: And who presented the Report.

Mr. Hoy: —and who presented the Report, but the right hon. Gentleman will not be unaware of the debate which took place in the House just a year ago, in which he promised to give full consideration to the matter. I remember a very excellent speech being made by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) on this particular issue. Be that as it may, I still think that the Secretary of State will have to come back to this Report, as will the President of the Board of Trade, because there is a lot of truth in what was said by one of my hon. Friends about expanding industry in towns and villages that already exist.
The Cairncross Committee singled out as an example of this development what might take place on the borders of Scotland, and in Midlothian and Fife. These are things which cannot be shirked, because we have got to provide employment for the people in those areas who have been shifted there because of the change in coal production. Just as we move miners to new mines, so we have also to provide employment for the wives and families of the miners we have shifted. It is necessary to do this and also to make provision for adequate roads.
Though I was unable to hear the speech this evening of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove, the essence of it has been reported to me, and I support what he said. In Scotland one of the heavy items we have to face up to is that of transport, and the more we can ease the position of transport the better it is going to be for the industries

that already exist in Scotland. These things can come only if we have the necessary expenditure road maintenance and the provision of new roads. If we are to get the best out of the new town in Fife I would remind the Under-Secretary of State, who is closely associated with that part of the country, that we must soon make up our minds whether we shall provide the road across the Forth to link both sides of the river. It may be that to complete the job we shall have to provide another bridge over the Tay, so that road transport can proceed from North to South.
I do not want the Under-Secretary to come with the same story about the cost of £30 million. He ought not to try to frighten people with the story of £30 million as though it had all to be spent in one year. That is the expenditure envisaged over a number of years. It was thought the Forth Road Bridge would take eight to 10 years to build and the £13 million involved in the £30 million mentioned by the Under-Secretary in a speech the other day represents building over 10 years and will not all be found by the Government. They will receive a fairly substantial contribution from the local authorities which should be taken into account when the hon. Gentleman is dealing with these figures.
I wish to say something about an industry in which I have a personal stake, the ports and harbours of Scotland. They have been going through a pretty rough period recently. I wrote to the Ministry of Labour on the subject and I acknowledge that they sent me a very courteous reply. At least I was able to read their reply without wanting to get on the phone immediately to respond to it. I cannot say the same of the Board of Trade. On 9th July the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour wrote reiterating the old story that if one is thinking of Leith one must also think of Edinburgh, because the two cannot be separated.
That is not true, because in 1946, under a Labour Government, we had Leith scheduled as a special area for special treatment outside the rest of Edinburgh and I do not think the hon. Gentleman should try to go back to that old argument which was disposed of in 1946. But his letter was a great improvement on the letter from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade who said


that we should not only consider Edinburgh and Leith but Portobello, Loan-head and Dalkeith as well, and I wondered where we were proposing to extend to. I would warn the hon. Gentleman that he must never use that argument in an attempt to evade his responsibilities.
In the letter he said that I said the port was dying. I said nothing of the kind. I did say it was faced with tremendous problems, and I would give him a few figures to prove that that is true. In his letter dated 9th July he said:
At the present time there is a shortage of dock labour in Leith.
On the following day when I went home I found there were 117 men signing the register. I was informed by the Dock Labour Corporation that on the day the hon. Gentleman wrote to me 189 men were unemployed in the forenoon and 155 in the afternoon. When one thinks of that total out of a register of 786 people it is a pretty serious position, and I do not think it should be belittled.
This port has rendered yeomen service and was congratulated by the Inland Docks Water Executive on its tremendous out-put and turn-round of shipping.

Mr. Woodburn: And no strikes.

Mr. Hoy: As my right hon. Friend says, there were no strikes. It is difficult to get men to go all out if they know at the end of the day that all they are doing is working themselves out of a job.
I would impress upon the Ministry of Labour and the Board of Trade that it is a very serious position in a dock like Leith—this also goes for most docks on the Forth such as Bo'ness, Kirkcaldy and Burntisland—to have, as Leith did last year, a drop of 200,000 tons in the cargoes carried compared with the previous year's total of 1,400,000 tons. A drop of one-seventh in the total cargo handled is a serious problem. It was that to which I was directing attention and on which I hope to get a reply.
The Minister is right when he says that a great deal of confidence has been shown in the Forth. The Docks Commission has spent a great deal of money in extensions, in the provision of new quays and in the erection, with Messrs. Ranks, of new granaries, but it expects some day to get a return for the money that it has

spent. It cannot go on providing capital equipment if the capital equipment does not earn its keep. Figures which were probably announced today show that last year the Docks Commission had a deficit of £70,000 on its working. Every hon. Member will realise that such docks as these—it is general in the Forth—cannot go on for every earning less or increasing their dues and harbour rates on the remainder of the traffic because that will kill off the traffic, and, as a result, the ports may become derelict. I do not think I am over-stating the case.
I want now to deal with the coal shipped from these ports. The Forth used to handle a tremendous quantity of coal. My own docks handled 1,600,000 to 2,100,000 tons before the war, but today they are handling only about 10 per cent. of that. A smaller quantity is being exported from Burntisland, Bo'ness, Methil and elsewhere. Methil has made a better recovery than most of the other ports in the Forth. In comparison with best pre-war export figures, Leith is doing only 9 per cent. of its former trade, Burntisland 2 per cent., Grangemouth 11 per cent. and Glasgow 9 per cent. Methil has recovered 33 per cent. of its best prewar year.
What causes some perturbation is that the rest of the coal export ports, except for two or three in Wales are doing a very much better trade. One English port has now reached 84 per cent. of its former trade. It is against these facts that we have to consider the problem of our ports. It is interesting to recall that in 1938 Leith alone exported more than half a million tons to supply the power stations on the Thames. Sad to say, it does not do half that trade in a year now. This calls for action. It will not be news to the National Coal Board because I have already written to Sir Hubert Houlds-worth about the issue.
I should like to have said many other things but I must make way for the Parliamentary Secretary. Perhaps I might be allowed just to put two other points as shortly as possible. We are also interested in all these areas in the fishing trade. The Secretary of State for Scotland gave us some figures today about the catches of last year. We are glad that they have gone up, but there has been a serious decline in the number of people engaged in this industry, and


I thought the right hon. Gentleman might have said that, despite these increased catches, out of a total of 14,500 in 1951 we have now dropped to 13,748. When we consider that the figure was 20,000 in 1938, we can measure the seriousness of the decline. The figure for the fishermen employed in the crofting counties alone has dropped from 4,067 in 1938 to 1,972 in 1952. These figures are serious. If we could make a contribution to the second figure I have mentioned, we should be making a real contribution towards solving the problem of the Highlands.
These are some of the questions which we should like answered and some of the suggestions that might help to solve the problem of making Scotland a more economic part of these Islands.

9.32 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Harold Watkinson): First, may I perform a very pleasant duty and add my congratulations and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Balfour)? I think we all admire his self-control, and perhaps we all wish we could sit in this House for eight years and manage not to impinge on the debates.
If I may, I want to give the hon. Gentleman a little advice. I hope' he will not wait another eight years. I mean this seriously, because our counsels cannot dispense for that long period with the sound and sensible things which the hon. Gentleman said today. So I say to him sincerely that I hope we shall hear him again soon and, since he wanted a "bit of an up and a downer," next time perhaps he will get it.
One must, as a Sassenach, feel some diffidence in entering this debate all. I hope that even a Sassenach may occasionally study Burns, and perhaps I shall be at one with the hon. Member for West Stirlingshire if I remember the ode "To a Mouse" and say:
Oh, what a panic's in my breastie.
What I think the Committee would best like me to do and how I think I can best answer the hon. Member for Leith (Mr. Hoy), is to try to give as factual a presentation as I can of the unemployment and employment position as we see it in the Ministry of Labour. Before I do that, however, I will clear out of the way one

point which the hon. Member for Leith and my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) raised, namely, the Distribution of Industry Act, Section 3.
As I said in the House on 25th February, as reported in column 2211 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, owing to the need of economy, grants and loans under Section 3 have had to be restricted to a bare minimum. But I want to make it plain, as I did then, that schemes of exceptional industrial importance which could not otherwise proceed are still considered on their merits. So it is not fair to say that this has been stopped entirely. It is merely that we are applying the test of exceptional importance.

Mr. T. Fraser: Could we have any information as to the fate of those schemes that have been submitted in the course of, say, the last six months?

Mr. Watkinson: As my time is short, perhaps I may leave this to the President of the Board of Trade. [Laughter.] I am sure that the Committee would hardly expect me to expound on a lot of cases of which I have not even been given notice. The principle is that grants-in-aid under Section 3 can still be given. I think that that answers the point made by the hon. Gentleman.
Now I come to what I really want to talk about—the Ministry of Labour and its work and how we see the position in Scotland. First, I want to say that in Scotland as elsewhere Her Majesty's Government are determined to carry on the policy of full employment which has been supported by every Government since the war. I ask hon. Members to look at the national problem. We can all be proud that, after the end of the terrible buying spree to which the Korean war gave a further push, after the end of a world textile slump last year, the unemployment figure for Great Britain this month is under 300,000. Compared with the same month last year—and I admit that this is a favourable comparison—we have a decrease of no fewer than 142,000. That is something of which we all ought to be proud. There are no party politics in this.
Full employment today has to be looked at against an entirely different background from that to which we


have perhaps grown rather too accustomed in the post-war years. As several hon. Members have said, the problem of the immediate post-war years was merely to turn the stuff out. It was one of supply. It was one of trying to meet the clamorous needs of customers all over the world who were desperately anxious for us to give them something. It was very nice while it lasted, but the position has completely changed. Today it is a question of demand, a world demand that is easing and shrinking, a world demand out of which other nations, especially Germany and Japan, now demand their share. The problem is one of exacting and precise demand.
I think that it is fair to say—because we must view the problems of Scotland against a realistic background—that full employment and our whole living standard depend perhaps not so much on the economic shifts and balances which any Government can put forward in their internal policy; what they really depend on, in the long-term, is our success or failure in meeting the increasingly exacting needs of our foreign customers. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) put that point very well.
Let us examine the employment picture in Scotland against this harsher and more exacting economic background. I want to try to be fair. We must realise that we can get some very odd comparisons if we carefully select our years. Last year we had the textile slump. Therefore, we can get a good comparison. In 1951, we had the combination of galloping inflation and the major onset of the rearmament programme. Therefore, we get a very bad comparison because that was a year of exceptionally low unemployment. The year 1950 was probably the last one where we had fairly average conditions.
I will try to relate the figures to each of these years and I hope that that will be a fair and unbiased comparison. The total figures have already been given. The figure on 15th June for Scotland as a whole was 56,556. That was a fall of 6,369 from the previous month and a fall of 11,955 from June, 1952. For the reasons I have explained, if we go back to 1951, it shows a rise of 14,246; so perhaps it is fair to go back to 1950. which is the last fairly normal year, and

that shows that the figure is down by 1,991. So it is fair to say that the figure for June this year is a little better. Now let us analyse it in greater detail. I would point out, first, that Scotland has done a little better than the rest of the country, because for Great Britain as a whole unemployment is still a little above the June, 1950, figure, whereas in Scotland it is a little below.
Now let us look at the figures for some peak months. The figure for January of this year—81,535—was higher than in the previous three years, but, if we analyse it, we find an interesting thing, which is also worrying, because it largely arose from the exceptional increase in unemployment among women. That may have been partly due to the hang-over from the textile slump, but I think it is fair to say that this rather steady increase in unemployment among women is worrying, and I shall come back to it later.
Unemployment among men for June was 36,500, which is the lowest June figure for six years, excepting 1951. The women's position is not nearly as good as that of the men, and that is something of which we must take account.

Mr. Thomas Steele: Has the hon. Gentleman any figures to show whether the women were married or single?

Mr. Watkinson: I have not got the details, but I would provide them if the hon. Gentleman would like them.
If we may go on with this factual appreciation, hon. Members have said that the position in Scotland is very much worse than the position in these islands as a whole, and I do not disagree. But another comparison we should make is of the Scottish Development Areas with other Development Areas, which is a perfectly fair comparison. If we take the figures for the month of January, 1953, a bad month, the Scottish Development Areas had 4·1 per cent. of unemployment, Merseyside had 4·7 per cent. and South Wales 3·4 per cent. Coming to June, a good month, the Scottish Development Areas had 3 per cent., Mersey-side 3·5 per cent. and South Wales 3 per cent. I am only making the point that the Development Areas in Scotland have about kept pace with the Development Areas in other parts of Great Britain; in fact, they have done a little better.

Mr. Manuel: The hon. Gentleman has given the Development Area figures for Scotland. Can he give us the comparable figures for England?

Mr. Watkinson: I am coming to that. I always give way to hon. Members, but I have only 15 minutes left and I have quite a lot to say.
Perhaps I may come next to the point which has worried some hon. Members—the problem of the hard core of unemployed. For June, 1953, the percentage of the total of unemployed who have been more than eight weeks unemployed in Scotland is 59·1; in Wales 605; in the Northern area 55·9; and over Great Britain as a whole, 49·0 per cent. The position is unsatisfactory enough, but Scotland does not seem to have a much greater proportion of longer-term unemployment than other areas.
If the Committee would like me to analyse the total figures, which may be of interest, the average figure for January to June, 1953, was approximately 65,500. That comprises people unemployed for not more than two weeks: 19 per cent. of the total; and between two and eight weeks 24 per cent. These two percentages are not too worrying, because they are people changing jobs and transitional unemployment. The real figure of unemployed for more than eight weeks is 57 per cent., or roughly 37,000. That is the figure we have to worry about.
Out of that, there are approximately 8,000 disabled persons unemployed, constituting a very serious problem, which we are all the time doing the very best we can to meet. It is a most difficult problem, particularly where pneumoconiotics are concerned. Then there are the pockets of unemployment, such as the problem of the 1,200 unemployed in Stornoway, where we cannot bring work to them nor can we take them to work. Thus the total figure includes an intractable minority.
I am sorry to present so many statistics to the Committee. It is an inhuman way of presenting what is, after all, a human problem, but it is the only way of giving the Committee the facts. I want to make it plain that my right hon. and learned Friend and myself regard every man and woman who is unemployed as a human and urgent problem. If I deal in statistics it is not because I forget the heartbreak that lies behind them.

Mr. Ross: Is it not a fact that Scotland has the highest proportion of men under 40 among its unemployed?

Mr. Watkinson: That is not my impression, but I will check the figure and let the hon. Gentleman know.
I want to say a word about the Highlands and Islands, where the figures are very much worse, and to give one or two typical examples. In the whole area, on 15th June, the proportion of unemployed was 5·2 per cent. Stornoway had the worst figure, 21·5 per cent. We all know the difficulties. I agree very much with the hon. Member for Leith, who said that the answer lay in building up the indigenous industries and making the most of them, and not continuing to try to bring in what I believe are called in South Wales "Doll's-eye" projects which last a little time and wither away at the first blast of competition. On that basis we can make Scotland a much more prosperous place than it is today.
Now a word about the North-East, because it so impressed me when I was there some months ago. There is an improved position in places like Buckie and Peterhead. We are trying to bring remedial measures there, in what the President of the Board of Trade is proposing to do in those areas. He may possibly say something about this himself tomorrow. At least, we have made a start, and we will look at any proposal such as that put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. J. N. Browne). We will examine anything that will bring a solution to this sort of area, but I am afraid that their main enemy is geography.
In trying to make a forecast about the future, let me say that while there was a fairly big drop between January and June this year, due to seasonal factors, which, of course, will reverse themselves in the winter months, there is an interesting trend, because in the estimated number of persons in employment there was an increase of 21,000 between December, 1952, and May, 1953. What is more interesting is that in those 21,000 there were not less than 7,500 in manufacturing industries. That is a hopeful sign, because it means that it was not only a seasonal improvement but an actual improvement in employment by manufacturing industries.
The figures would have been very much better but for the depression in the Falkirk iron foundries. There is another sign which shows that Scotland is, I am delighted to see, doing better than the rest of the country. Between February and June outstanding vacancies have risen from about 16,000 to 22,000. That is a hopeful sign for the future, a sign that Scottish industry is on its toes trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps.
Perhaps I may sum up these remarks by saying that on the whole, while there is no room for complacency, at least Scotland appears to be holding its own in relation to the rest of the country. The fairest measure of this, if I may quote this statistical item, is to take what I think the hon. Gentleman wanted me to do, a direct comparison of the percentage figures of total unemployment between Scotland and Great Britain. The Scottish figure is 2·7 and the figure for Great Britain is 1·4. That is the measure of the problem. Within that problem the position of women gives rise to anxiety.
I make no apology for turning for a moment to the competitive power of industry in Scotland. That is what our full employment policy must rest upon. It is disturbing to hear the sort of remark which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Govan about the possible cancellation of contracts. I am afraid that that is not only in the shipbuilding industry, at least not in my experience.
I will not say again what is obvious to all, that we must be competitive in world markets. But I think that we must search our hearts and take it particularly unto ourselves to see that nothing that can be done is left undone, whether in a closer relation between wages and output or in better encouragement of new ideas and projects. It is a great responsibility for managements, for trade unions, for the Government and for this House as a whole to take, if we neglect anything in these difficult and trying months ahead that will improve our competitive position. Whatever we do internally cannot possibly do any good if we fail to maintain the external position. We cannot have a Keynesian theory in a balance of payments crisis. That is perhaps what we have forgotten in recent years, and what we must remember again today.
I have said that the position is perhaps a little more hopeful. I must be fair and

say that as the seasonal improvement declines and the winter comes on, the unemployment figures inevitably must rise. We must also expect a more undulating kind of economy and we shall have groups of industries which for a time will fall on difficult times. The Falkirk iron foundries are a case in point. In the course of an Adjournment debate recently the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm Mac-Pherson) did his duty in raising the difficult problems in that area. Whilst, as he knows, many of those registered as unemployed, are actually working short-time and are not wholly unemployed, the figures are not good. They rose from 2·7 per cent. in December, 1952, to 4·3 per cent. in April, 1953, but they fell away in June to 3·6 per cent., or 1,798.
This is an example of an industry which has had difficult times through no fault of its own. Its markets have gone. The hon. Member did his duty, and I hope that I do mine. Between us we went to each Ministry concerned, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Ministry of Supply and the Board of Trade. Between us we made the most urgent representations and I know that my right hon. Friends did their utmost to meet the needs of this industry. It was no fault of the hon. Members, or of Her Majesty's Government, that we could not bring immediate aid. We may get more trade from Australia and more business through the modernisation of houses at home. But when an industry falls upon temporary depression it must take its courage in both hands and hold on. It must not get into a panic and disperse its labour by taking panic measures. Managements and Government together must do their utmost to find new markets.
I should like to look now at the docks situation. A few months ago we were all very worried about it. The figures of unemployment were very large. For example, for Scotland as a whole for the month ended 7th March the daily average percentage of those on the dock workers' register who were surplus labour was 21·1. Now, for June, the figure is 6·6 per cent. I did write to the hon. Member for Leith and I quite agree that I said there was a shortage of dock labour in Leith. The answer is to be found in the words of Lord Crook, in his report on


the dock labour scheme, which has just been presented to my right hon. and learned Friend. He says that the whole scheme is
subject to local inequalities inseparable from an industry of this nature.
It is that kind of industry which has too many men at one moment and not nearly enough at another.
I am sure that the figures which the hon. Member for Leith gave are right, but in another week or so they may be different. It is fair to say that they have improved. As to the position of the port of Leith as a whole, I promise the hon. Member that we have looked carefully at it and that we shall continue to seek what we can do for Leith. The thing that would help most would be more coal for export.

Mr. Woodburn: But the Government are having to import it.

Mr. Watkinson: I agree, and I think that that is almost a national disaster. It is a fact that if only we had a few more million tons of coal to sell abroad at present it would do more to put us on our feet than any other single thing that we could do. I am not saying that against the miners. They have a dirty and dangerous job which has not been well enough paid in the past. I hope that with the help of the House the mining industry will realise that it bears the future of this country on its shoulders.

Mr. Pryde: The miners are in no way to blame.

Mr. Watkinson: I agree. I only wish that we had some more coal.
It is fair to end by describing a little of the work and the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour in Scotland. The right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) was kind enough to say that he thought that my right hon. and learned Friend's Department was perhaps more closely in touch with the pulse of life in Scotland than any other Department. I think that is true. We have a unique network of local employment committees, which are all voluntary. One of the pleasant things about this Department is that we rely so much on people—trade unionists and employers—who are prepared voluntarily to give their time to

help the country. Through these employment committees, and the local employment exchange managers, we are able to get a very clear day to day picture.
The point which the right hon. Member fairly put is, what do we do about it? Is it all consumed within the Ministry? I can tell him that it is not. The whole function of our Scottish headquarters office is to pass on that information as it is obtained to the Secretary of State, the Scottish Office, the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Supply. We act as a sort of sounding board for the whole of Scottish industry, in a way that no other Government Department can do. We are constantly making recommendations to other Government Departments.
The point raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) is a very good one. The situation in Lanarkshire has to be watched most carefully and seriously, because in this ten-year period we have to solve that problem, and it is a heavy responsibility on the Ministry of Labour. As an Englishman in this debate, perhaps I may express my admiration for Scotland, as I have seen it in what visits I have been able to make. This country, which has to face grimmer problems than most, always seems to bring such a spirit against them that it is bound to overcome them in the end.

Mr. Hannan: Has the hon. Member a word to say about disablement?

Mr. Watkinson: Perhaps I may get in touch with the hon. Member on that question. It is a very difficult point, and I could not possibly answer it now. I have made a mental note to write to the hon. Member, or to see him about it.
I believe that by good team work and devotion to duty, not only in the Ministry of Labour but in the Government, in the House, and among Members on both sides who represent the constituencies which are affected, we can meet the competitive demands in these sterner times. It will not be an easy job. In the Ministry of Labour we have our local contacts and experience, and it is right that I should say that this problem needs a lot of new thinking among employers, trade unionists and the Government as a whole, and also among Members on both sides of the House.
The old, easy days are gone, and they will not come back—or, if they do, it will be as a result of war, which God forbid. We are up against the toughest competition that this country has seen for many years. I believe that we can overcome it, and we must overcome it, or the fringe areas will suffer the worst. That is the problem that worries many Members who represent Scottish constituencies. It is those areas which geography handicaps so greatly that must bear the greatest burden if we fall on really difficult times.
I end this debate today, from the point of view of the Ministry, not in a spirit of gloom. Scotland has done well to maintain her position, and I believe that she will come out of these tough and competitive times——

It being Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

ISLE OF MAN (CUSTOMS) BILL

Bill read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. R. Thompson.]

Committee Tomorrow.

MEMBERS' EXPENSES, ETC.

Select Committee appointed to consider and report upon the extent to which the Members' Fund fulfils, under present conditions, the purposes for which it was set up, and upon the nature and extent of the expenditure incurred by Members of this House in the performance of their duties and also upon the practice of Commonwealth and foreign Parliaments for meeting comparable expenditure incurred by their Members in this field.—[Mr. McLeavy.]

TRANSPORT FACILITIES, NORTH LONDON

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. R. Thompson.]

10.1 p.m.

Mr. Ernest Davies: I find myself compelled once more to raise the question of the inadequate travel facilities to North London. I have pursued this matter since I was first elected in 1945, and the last time I raised it on the Adjournment was on 31st January, 1949. As then, I want in particular to deal with the facilities to Tottenham, Edmonton and on to Enfield.
Since I raised it in 1949, there has unfortunately been very little change. There has been some improvement in the road facilities, in as much as there is more rolling stock available and travel conditions have somewhat improved, although the congestion still persists, but on the railways it is unfortunately still a shocking story of false starts, frustrated hopes and breach of faith by successive Governments. The responsible transport authorities are the least to blame as they have been starved of capital investment by successive Governments. They have done their best with the antiquated equipment which is available to them.
Similarly, the local authorities have done everything in their power to urge upon the Government and the transport authorities the necessity for improved facilities to this part of North London and beyond. The public traveller to this congested but highly important industrial area is the helpless victim of Governmental inaction. His patience is incredible because he is jolted from Liverpool Street to Brimsdown, Ponders End and Enfield, or Liverpool Street to Tottenham, Edmonton and Enfield Town, in old, drab, ill-lit and poorly-ventilated carriages which are little better than wooden boxes, drawn by hissing but halting old locomotive stock compared with which the "Puffing Billy" and the "Rocket" were modern engines.
These engines have to run in reverse in order to arrive and they take 34 minutes to cover the 10¾ miles from Liverpool Street to Enfield Town with 13 intermediate stops, at every one of which stations


the trains come to a halt. It is a disgrace that in this age of jets and turbo-props my poor constituents should still be put through this torture twice daily. I have asked myself what they have done to deserve it.
This problem is an inheritance from the early days of private enterprise and the near bankrupt days of the privately-owned railways. It really is inexcusable it should persist so long. It is inexcusable because the solution is clear and the plans to solve the problem are there. The great deficiency is lack of modern railway services and through facilities to Central London. The one could be secured by electrification and the other by the construction of a new Tube.
The 1949 Report of the Working Party on the London Plan provides for both of these, and the Minister, who has been pressed time and again in this House, has not yet given us any clear indication of what are the priorities of this plan. Only a week ago I asked him if he had yet made up his mind, and he said he was still hoping to. Five times since October last year I have pressed him to give an indication of what are the priorities. I am still awaiting the answer.
The Transport Commission themselves in December, 1951, announced that as far as they were concerned Route C, which is the construction of the new Tube from North-East London to King's Cross, Euston and Victoria, had the first priority. It is not clear to what extent this new Tube, if and when constructed, would serve this area; it is not clear which part of this area would it be extended to northwards. The latest information is that the Tube would be diverted to Walthamstow, and it would thus not go north from Finsbury Park, to Tottenham, Edmonton and Enfield would then not be served.
Sometimes I regret that this Tube has been put forward as the first priority, as it appears to be, because it is now being used as an excuse to hold up all development. On 6th July the Minister, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Sorensen) said:
This work cannot be undertaken until the new Tube to improve the distribution of traffic entering the Central London zone from Tottenham and Walthamstow has been carried out."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 6th July, 1953; Vol. 517, c. 64.]

Then again on 8th July the Parliamentary Secretary, in reply to another Adjournment debate on a similar aspect of this problem, made the same excuse. He pointed out that,
Improvement in the rail services entering Liverpool Street from the North and North-East would merely aggravate the position which the new Tube … is designed to alleviate."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 8th July, 1953; Vol. 517, c. 1459.]
It is really ridiculous to hold up the modernisation of these suburban lines until a new Tube is constructed. If the Minister were able to give us tonight an indication that the work is going to start on this new Tube, well and good, but I am perfectly certain he is not in a position to do so, and there is no likelihood that work will be started on the construction of that new Tube yet. It would cost, I imagine, £2½ million to build a mile of Tube, or something in that neighbourhood. In view of the financial position of the country and of the restrictions on capital investment, and particularly in view of the way in which the railways have been starved of capital investment, is it really likely that the Government would sanction the construction of a new Tube? I suggest that it is very unlikely for many years to come that this new Tube will be constructed.
Consequently, the only way to bring relief to the travelling public in North London, particularly the public travelling between Enfield, Edmonton, Tottenham and London, the only way in which relief can be brought to that section of the suffering travelling public, is to go in for the medium term solution, that would be cheaper and much speedier to undertake, and that is to electrify the suburban services to Chingford and Enfield Town, including the Churchbury Loop from Edmonton that was closed down some time ago and ultimately the Liverpool Street—Cambridge line through Enfield Lock. This would at least provide speedier, more frequent, cleaner, and more comfortable travel. It would relieve the roads at the same time, and I suggest that is the only practical solution to this problem taking the medium term view.
There is more steel available now and, presumably, there is more finance available for capital investment. There is a labour force which is at present working with technical skill on the Manchester-Sheffield electrification and, when that is


completed, I suggest that the man-power should be made available for undertaking the electrification of the North suburban lines which so urgently need attention.
The commission are willing so far as I am aware to proceed with modernisation. It has drawn attention to the needs of this area over a long period in its successive annual reports, and my only regret so far as they are concerned is that they have given priority to the Tilbury-Southend line which has less need for this modernisation so far as the numbers using it is concerned compared with the inadequate facilities available to North London. It is North London which should have been given priority over the Tilbury-Southend line so far as the electrification is concerned.
In conclusion, I ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he will undertake to request his right hon. Friend to consult with the British Transport Commission and seriously to look into this possibility of electrification of the North suburban lines to Chingford and Enfield in particular and if he will abandon this foolish idea of holding up any further modernisation of these lines until the new Tube, Route C, has been constructed. We cannot wait until that time. To make this excuse is like saying that we will not have any bread and margarine today because there is no jam available tomorrow. That is really a ridiculous and illogical argument to pursue.
I therefore suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary and to his right hon. Friend that it is time to look at this problem again and to take it seriously. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary comes to reply he will not make one of his facetious speeches because I can assure him that my constituents quite rightly take this matter very seriously.

10.13 p.m.

Mr. Graeme Finlay: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) was not present to hear the debate in the early hours of the morning of last week, when I raised precisely the same subject. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary then

had to face a complete absence of hon. Members opposite. It would have saved a certain amount of Parliamentary time and repetition of the answers now to be given by the Parliamentary Secretary if the hon. Gentleman had been present on that occasion, when he would have heard the hon. and learned Member for Ilford, North (Sir G. Hutchinson) draw attention to the indecent conditions that obtained on the Central Line and on the services which have to serve the whole of the Eastern outer region of London. He was, however, not present, so he did not hear that. If he had been he would have heard me talk about the Chingford line which has been raised tonight. I do not want to labour this matter again.
I am certain that the Parliamentary Secretary is very much impressed with the difficulties which confront passenger users, and I think that he told us about his experiences in his youth when he used the Tube—it was then a 2d. ride, I believe—from Liverpool Street as a matter of pleasure. That is not a thing which he would attempt to do today. Everyone is persuaded of that, but it is much easier to state a problem than to solve it.
It is abundantly clear that after two world wars we have to face a great deal of leeway. I should like tonight to be as realistic as I can about this because I have already pressed the Parliamentary Secretary about the implementation of Schemes C and D, so I will not do that again. I am glad that he is giving priority when this can be done to Scheme C, that is to say, the line from Enfield, Tottenham and Edmonton to Victoria.
In the meantime, I should like to be practical about this and ask my hon. Friend if there is anything he can do about coaches on the Central Line. These are composed, as to about half, of seven coaches. I think he has succeeded in adding an extra coach to the others. If he can somehow contrive to add an extra coach to those trains to enable an extra complement of passengers to be carried in each case he will be going some way under the present conditions of stringency to relieve the unquestionably great discomfort suffered at peak hours by passengers. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to say something on these lines when he makes his reply.

10.16 p.m.

Mr. Austen Albu: I was surprised the hon. Member should choose this occasion of an Adjournment debate to make a violent political attack on myself and other hon. Members on this side of the House. How we were expected to know that an Adjournment debate at 2 a.m. concerning Central London Line congestion was going to deal with serious problems affecting our constituencies, I do not know. I think the Parliamentary Secretary was behaving in a manner which was facetious and discourteous in the remarks which he made on that occasion.
If hon. Members opposite had given any indication that they wished to raise this subject, which is not a political matter but is one of great interest to our constituents, we should have been present to take part in the debate. My hon. Friend and myself were already balloting for this particular Adjournment on a matter with which my hon. Friend has been concerned since 1945 and which was the subject of one of the main pledges which I gave to my constituents when I was elected in 1948.
In January, 1949, when my hon. Friend last raised this matter on the Adjournment, it was, unfortunately, my lack of knowledge of the customs of this House which was the reason why I was not present, because the House rose at eight o'clock and I expected to come here at 10 for the Adjournment debate. Everybody else from North London spoke on that occasion and reports of the debate appeared on the front pages of the newspapers. The Parliamentary Secretary may have no sympathy with me over this, but at the subsequent General Election, it was the one serious matter on which I was cross-questioned. The fact which I wish to make the Parliamentary Under-Secretary understand is how very seriously this matter is considered in my constituency and the surrounding constituencies.
I entirely support my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) on the question of the electrification of the lines from Liverpool Street and the Churchbury Loop. We all know that the deep tube part of Route C is the real answer. As Lord Latham said in an interview in the "Evening Standard" of 20th December, 1951, when asked what

would be the greatest single step in ending rush hour queues, he replied "More Tube railways." When asked which was most needed he replied:
The one called Route C—the Tottenham area to Victoria.
There has been a doubt raised by a statement by the London Transport Executive that the route might, instead of going north through Edmonton, be deflected from South Tottenham and go across the Lee Valley to Walthamstow. There is considerable anxiety in my constituency and, I believe, in Enfield about this. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us something about it.
The views which we are putting forward are not the personal views of my hon. Friend and myself. They are the very aggrieved views of the Joint Conference of Representatives of North London Local Authorities, which has been in existence for a number of years, which met my predecessor and dealt with the Minister in the previous Government, and which continues to make representations to us from time to time. They have put forward a suggested modification of the Working Party recommendations, as the Parliamentary Secretary knows. They suggest, in order of priority, the electrification of the Churchbury Loop from Cheshunt to Edmonton; secondly, the electrification of the suburban railway services from Liverpool Street to Enfield Town and Chingford; and, finally, a new Tube from Edmonton-Tottenham to Victoria.
There is no doubt that in the last few years, probably owing to the very considerable pressure which some of us have been putting on successive Ministers, there has been an improvement in the trolley bus services in addition to the minor improvements which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. These do not deal with the major problem of the great congestion on Tube railways and the appalling conditions of the old steam railway out of Liverpool Street.
I have always considered that there would be a considerable easing of the Tube railway congestion and the trolley bus services if the suburban lines from Liverpool Street were electrified and modernised. I believe this would afford considerable relief to the ordinary passenger transport service. It would amount


to a comparatively small cost and is well worth serious attention. I think we should obtain some indication of the order of priority and make a start on this very serious problem.

Mr. David Weitzman: Representing a North London constituency, I strongly support all that my hon. Friends have said. This is a crying scandal and I hope that steps will be taken to alleviate the position.

10.22 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Gurney Braithwaite): This Adjournment debate is a sequel or epilogue to that initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Finlay) in the small hours of Thursday last which the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) and his hon. Friends did not think worth while to attend, although the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu) has just addressed his remarks to the congestion on the Central London Line which is largely created by the transport situation in North-East London——

Mr. Ernest Davies: The Parliamentary Secretary is really being grossly discourteous.

Mr. Braithwaite: I am not being discourteous, I am being factual. I saw that on the benches opposite not a single Socialist Member was present——

Mr. Davies: I think it only fair to myself and to my hon. Friends to point out that it appeared in the list of Adjournments as congestion on the Central London Line. How were we to know that the question of Enfield, Edmonton, Tottenham and the Northern Line would be referred to?

Mr. Braithwaite: If the hon. Member is unaware that the congestion on the Central London Line is largely caused by the situation in the area he represents, I admire his innocence but not his acumen——

Mr. Davies: Why not get on with it?

Mr. Braithwaite: The hon. Member was a junior Minister in the Socialist Government and able to exercise pressure in this matter, but for reasons I will elaborate he was unable to obtain results.
As the hon. Member was not present last week I will repeat what I then said, that this area received the lion's share of the electrification programme between the years 1935 and 1940 when the Central London Tube was extended through the Leyton and Leytonstone area and the loop line was built to Hainault. When the London Plan was published local authorities of the Northern London area, namely Edmonton, Hornsey, Southgate, Tottenham, Wood Green, Stoke Newington, Barnet, Cheshunt and Enfield, set up a joint conference to study the report.
In July, 1950, a deputation from the joint conference accompanied by my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Health and the hon. Member for Edmonton, presented to the then Minister of Transport a memorandum which urged that, to provide the maximum relief to meet the most urgent problem of traffic facilities in the Northern London area, immediate preference should be given to the following items in the plan: first, electrification, with consequential works, of the Churchbury Loop from Cheshunt to Edmonton; secondly, electrification of the Eastern Region suburban services between Liverpool Street, Enfield town and Chingford; thirdly, that part of the proposed new Tube called Route C from South Tottenham to Victoria. These proposals were examined by the British Transport Commission with great care. They reported that the electrification of the Enfield and Chingford lines could only be contemplated as an accompaniment to Route C.
I am sorry to find the hon. Member for Enfield, East in disagreement with a body for whom I have found him to have a great admiration amounting almost to idolatory. It was their view that there would be additional pressure at Liverpool Street which would cause serious difficulties, especially on the Central Line, as I told the House a week ago. Their view also was that the electrification of the Churchbury Loop could only accompany the electrification of the main line to Cambridge. The Commission did not consider that to reopen it with steam trains prior to the electrification of the main line would provide any real easing of the problem, since only three additional trains during each of the peak travel periods could be run.
The British Transport Commission have told us that they have under constant


review the plans for the development of transport in North London, and I do not think I can do more than assure the people of North London that their travelling needs are fully understood. One ought to add that the delay in these matters—and I think it is delay for which all Governments must take their share of blame; I do not think it is blame really—is the new factors which arise, and these will be fully borne in mind in connection with the existing plans. We entirely appreciate the present difficulties.
Last week my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Sir G. Hutchinson), who is here with us tonight, pointed out with considerable force that the planners had not moved on parallel lines with the development in North London, but rather on diverse lines, and had entirely failed to take into consideration the transport position when this part of North London was being developed.

Mr. Albu: Before the war.

Mr. Braithwaite: Before and since the war. I do not think there is any party

point at all, but it may be that there are new factors which might arise. I am authorised to say on behalf of the Transport Commission that they will be fully borne in mind in connection with the existing plans. London Transport have many problems at the present time; hon. Members opposite are as conscious of them as we are. We have set up these bodies, and I think it is only fair to say that these difficulties would have confronted the old underground system with equal force if we were back in the days of London Passenger Transport Board.
As I said last week, it is impossible to fight two major world wars within a period of 25 years, followed by an intense rearmament programme, and at the same time to be able to construct transport facilities which, we have been reminded tonight, would cost about £2½ million per mile to construct, and I am afraid that is all the comfort that I can give to the hon. Gentleman tonight.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Half-past Ten o'clock.